Aquinox Pharmaceuticals, a Canada clinical-stage pharmaceutical company discovering and developing novel oral drug candidates to treat inflammation and cancer, has listed on Nasdaq as part of an initial public offering. Corporate venturing investors include Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. The net proceeds of the IPO were about $47m.

Allergy drug development firm Circassia floats on the London Stock Exchange in the biggest UK biotech initial public offering in years.

iBrands Corporation acquires Hatchbrands Ventures, an investment firm specialising in pre-floatation backing for technology startups in accelerators and incubators.

Internet giant Google winds down parcel delivery service and Waterloo startup Bufferbox after purchasing the company last year.

Leeds spin-out Xeros intends to take near-waterless washing machine technology to AIM.

The deal also marks the first exit for the $35m Partners Innovation Fund, a corporate and academic research venturing unit of Partners HealthCare System, a US-based hospital and physicians group covering Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and McLean Hospital.

IBM has agreed to acquire Cloudant, a cloud database company backed by In-Q-Tel, Rackspace, Devonshire Investors and Samsung Ventures, to "help its clients take advantage of big data, cloud and mobile."