Founded in 2006, SiliconBlue has sold more than 10 million chips for consumer handheld devices and raised money from venture capital firms BlueRun Ventures (which spun off from phone maker Nokia in 2005), Crosslink Capital, NEA, Apex Venture Partners and Atlantic Bridge and trade peer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Venture capital firm SAIF, in which Cisco was a cornerstone limited partner, invested $25m and $5m on Global Education in 2006 and 2008 respectively.

Investment banks Citigroup, Barclays Capital and Piper Jaffray are co-lead underwriters of the initial public offering for the pre-revenue company that posted a $23m net loss for the first nine months of the year.

Investment banks Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are co-lead underwriters of the initial public offering (IPO) for NDS.

China's sovereign wealth fund CIC bought their 25% stake in Shanduka - which means change in TshiVenda - for R2bn ($240m).

Vlingo had raised more than $26.5m from venture capital firms Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners and corporations including US-listed internet services provider Yahoo! and phone operator AT&T.

In October, Location Labs, which was formerly known as WaveMarket and makes the Safely security software launched in September, also bought peers Wirkle and Volly.

Takeda will pay an initial $190m with a further $120m depending on the performance of its potential drugs targeting cancers that has begun making progress with the regulators.

BillSafe will be merged with Ebay's PayPal online payments division.

Akamai is paying at least $268m in cash for Cotendo (plus what it said was the assumption of outstanding unvested options to purchase Cotendo common stock).