Coca-cola Agrees To Acquire North American Bottling Operations

According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture.According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture. The deal would give Microsoft Barnes & Noble's e-books, homegrown games and of course its Nook e-readers and tablets. But perhaps not for long: Nook plans to discontinue its Android-based tablet business by the end of 2014, according to the documents. Instead, the company will transition to having Nook content available solely on third-party devices, perhaps ones made by Microsoft, if the purchase goes through.

PepsiCo is pulling an online ad for Mountain Dew that was criticized for portraying racial stereotypes and making light of violence toward women.

BERLIN — Almost 65 years after Allied planes flew Western supplies into blockaded Berlin, a new American import is arriving by air: craft beer. The beer is being flown in as part of a new surge of German interest in American brewing, upending a centuries-old relationship in which German beer defined the golden standard for brewing and Americans emulated it. Read full article >>    

Germany drug company Bayer AG says it intends to buy California-based Conceptus to expand its birth control offerings. Bayer said Monday it would launch a public offer to pay $31.00 per share for all the stock in Conceptus, Inc. That means Bayer would pay $1.1 billion. Conceptus makes Essure, an irreversible birth control method in which metal and polyester coils are inserted to block a woman's fallopian tubes. The procedure can be done in 10 minutes a doctor's office. Conceptus CEO D. Keith Grossman was quoted in a Bayer statement as saying Essure "will benefit in new markets from Bayer's global presence." The deal is subject to approval by antitrust authorities and could be completed by midyear. Conceptus is based in Mountain View, California and employs about 300 people.

Disclosure: I was an early employee at Pulse, but left six months prior to the acquisition.