DealZone

Kraft Foods Inc sweetened its offer for British confectioner Cadbury, lifting the cash component of its $10 billion hostile bid by 60 pence a share. While a sweetened offer was widely expected, less anticipated was a deal by the U.S. food giant to sell its North American Pizza unit to Swiss rival Nestle for $3.7 billion. Nestle has since ruled itself out of the race for Cadbury, ending speculation about one potential rival bidder.

Nestle had fanned the flames of speculation with a deal to sell its majority stake in eye care firm Alcon to minority partner Novartis, but it’s now clear the money is not destined for Cadbury shareholders.

French oil company Total signed a $2.25 billion deal to take a 25 percent stake in Chesapeake Energy’s Barnett Shale gas fields in north Texas, following similar investments by U.S. and European rivals in North American shale gas.

For more on these and other deal-related stories from Reuters, click here.

In other media:

Sportech, the football pools operator, has agreed a new 91 million pound credit facility to help it pursue a “significant acquisition”, raising speculation it could bid for state-owned bookmaker the Tote, the FT and Daily Telegraph report.

British private equity firm Lyceum Capital has taken a majority stake in energy advisory business McKinnon and Clarke, valuing the Scottish company at 22 million pounds, the FT reports.

Talk about throwing your weight around. Exxon’s $30 billion all-stock bid for XTO Energy puts a pretty solid stamp on the natural gas space. It also puts Exxon in a better position to capitalize on energy generation, rather than just heating houses and keeping SUV’s guzzlin’.

The world’s largest publicly traded company lit a fuse that has long tantalized M&A markets. The whole natural gas sector jumped on the news, as expectations grew that an elephantine stampede from big oil was underway. Among the gas names that went bang: Chesapeake Energy jumped 7 percent, Devon Energy Corp rose 5.3 percent, and Canada’s EnCana rose as much as 8.7 percent.

U.S. natural gas prices have been under pressure with inventories of the fuel not far from record high levels. But with the winter winds of change blowing through the world’s increasingly environmentally aware corridors of power, as well as the always heat-hungry U.S. Northeast getting deeper into the snow season, the market for natural gas plays may well have started to look overripe.