Supermarkets have become major players in the retail sale of books, movie and TV DVDs and music and are now buttressing their position in digital consumption through vendor acquisitions.

As Amazon and Barnes & Noble reach across the pond, preparing to launch more services and devices in the UK and Europe, Tesco is stepping up its own territorial imperative with the $7.2 million purchase of white-label digital bookseller Mobcast. "The acquisition further strengthens Tesco’s digital entertainment offer, following the purchase of movie and TV streaming service blinkbox in 2011 and personalised internet radio service WE7 in June 2012," the company commented in a press release.

According to Mobcast, e-Book sales via portable devices are projected to reach nearly $10 billion globally by 2016, three times expectations for 2012, with close to 30% of e-books purchased on tablets, 15% on smartphones and 55% on e-readers. And while Tesco accounted for 10.7% of UK entertainment sales this spring, Amazon gained a 21.1% share according to British trade journal The Bookseller.Continue reading...

Almost a year ago, former Google executive Marissa Mayer struck a deal to purchase the user review-based Zagat brand.

Today, Google confirmed it's expanding its travel content library by acquiring the Frommer's brand of travel guidebooks and related assets from US publisher John Wiley & Sons, while Mayer, of course, has struck a different big deal for herself.

The Frommer's deal will beef up the Google+ Local platform, which now incorporates Zagat restaurant reviews, with Frommers-curated lists such as "Best National Parks of the Pacific Northwest" and other travel resources.

Why buy rather than partner? Zagat, for starters, can't do it all alone — while Google has big plans in the travel space.Continue reading...

Apparently tired of just prodding its unresponsive soup business into a turnaround, Campbell Soup made a big diversification move Monday by agreeing to acquire Bolthouse Farms for $1.55 billion. Bolthouse began in 1915 as a big carrot farm run by William Bolthouse near Bakersfield, Calif., and has scored a number of successes over the last few years in the better-for-you food, beverage and snack space — not to mention trying to put baby carrots top of mind.

By purchasing the Bolthouse brand from a private equity firm, Madison Dearborn Partners, Campbell gains a premium beverage business to complement its growing portfolio of V8 beverages as well as a fresh-carrot business that Campbell believes could be a healthy-snacking opportunity.

In addition to its implications for Campbell, the move also represents a further homogenization of America's biggest consumer-packaged-goods conglomerates, making Campbell look a little more like Kraft, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola as they all diversify strategically into more better-for-you categories.Continue reading...

Volkswagen has been on a business-building tear for some time now, but the July 4th acquisition of the part of Porsche that the company didn't own will likely be considered the crowning achievement for the leader of what has become the world's most ambitious automaker.

Ferdinand Piech is the grandson of Porsche founder Ferdinand Porsche. So when the 75-year-old chairman of Volkswagen AG agreed to buy the rest of Porsche SE's automaking business for 4.46 billion euros this week, it marked a fitting cap to Piech's two-decade effort to put VW atop the pinnacle of the global automotive business.Continue reading...

Anheuser-Busch InBev already owned half of Mexican Grupo Modelo but the world’s biggest brewer apparently needs to keep consuming all in its sight. InBev shelled out $20.1 billion to grab the other half of the brewer of such beers as Corona and Modelo and stake its claim to the growing Mexican market. The name of the website it set up to announce the deal says it all: GlobalBeerLeader.com.

It's a huge purchase, to be sure, but AB InBev sees the upside in the company as a whole and its Corona brand specifically. Modelo “is Mexico's biggest brewer with a 50 percent-plus market share in a virtual duopoly with Heineken's FEMSA Cerveza in the world's fourth most-profitable beer market,” Reuters reports. “Corona is the biggest imported beer in the lucrative U.S. market.” InBev shelled out so much dough partly because Modelo stakeholders had no real incentive to sell.Continue reading...

Now that news of the News Corp. is officially moving ahead with splitting its vast global media empire, founder and chairman Rupert Murdoch warned analysts and reporters on a conference call this morning that the plan to divide into two companies “is not a fait accompli. There are a lot of steps to take.”

He also said the impetus, hailed by the markets as a smart business move that will unshackle its challenged newspapers from its more profitable entertainment brands, is  “not a reaction to anything in Britain” such as ongoing investigations into his newspapers’ phone hacking and bribery scandals. COO Chase Carey, who will become CEO of the newspaper and publishing assets that Murdoch has built from his days as a scrappy Australian news magnate, added there were “no changes” in the corporate plan to buy the rest of BSkyB it doesn't currently control.

Murdoch, with his inimitable Aussie turn of phrase, discredited rumors that the publishing unit was the weak ‘orphan’ and emphasized the pending split is not a lack of faith in that business.Continue reading...

Following a board meeting this evening in New York, the board of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has approved splitting the company into two publicly traded entities: publishing and entertainment. The Wall Street Journal broke the news, just as it earlier reported that its parent company was contemplating such a move.

According to WSJ the company split would take about a year to approve, dividing assets such as its lucrative FOX broadcast network and TV stations, cable TV channels and 20th Century Fox studio into one company (likely led by Chase Carey, News Corp. deputy chairman, president and COO) and its newspapers, HarperCollins book publishing unit and other publishing assets into another.Continue reading...

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has confirmed a report in its own newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, that it's considering dividing itself into two companies, separating its publishing division in order to focus on its much larger and more profitable entertainment arm. 

"News Corporation confirmed today that it is considering a restructuring to separate its business into two distinct publicly traded companies," was the comment in its one-sentence statement.

Top editors and publishers from the company’s newspapers gathered in New York (according to the New York Times) to discuss the proposal along with Murdoch, his son James Murdoch, Chase Carey, COO, and Joel I. Klein, CEO of News Corporation’s education division and a trusted adviser.Continue reading...