DealZone

The world’s largest credit and debit card processor Visa is to pay some $2 billion for CyberSource, a company that helps retailers take online payments, including from mobile phones. Analysts estimate Visa already has 45 percent of the online market and the deal will only serve to boost the company’s position further.

The U.S.’s largest mall owner Simon Property Group has sent a revised recapitalization plan to rival General Growth Properties, which would see new investors, including Oak Hill Advisers, RREEF, ING Clarion Real Estate Securities and Taconic Capital, inject a further $1.1 billion into the business. Simon has already offered to invest $2.5 billion for about a quarter of its rival, while  Paulson & Co — the U.S. hedge fund that bet against Goldman Sachs Abacus mortgage product — injecting a further $1 billion.

Film moguls Bob and Harvey Weinstein and backer Ron Burkle could reach a deal for Walt Disney’s Miramax Films within days, despite a rift between the Weinsteins and one of their minority shareholders Mark Cuban.

For more Reuters deals news, click here.

In other media on Thursday:

Private equity firm Advent International is frontrunner to buy sofa chain DFS. Despite claims from the company’s founder Lord Kirkham that he is already “loaded”, the 500 million pound auction of the business has continued, the FT reported.

The FT also wrote that online grocery retailer Ocado is poised to appoint JPMorgan Cazenove, UBS and Goldman Sachs to advise on a possible 1 billion pound summer flotation.

Debt-ridden Hollywood studio MGM, whose library is home to such gems as the Rocky and James Bond flicks, has replaced CEO Harry Sloan, appointing a three person team to run the show: famed turnaround ace Stephen Cooper, motion pictures group boss Mary Parent, and CFO Bedi Singh.

Sloan is out as CEO but the veteran Hollywood businessman, who took the helm a few months after MGM's 2005 buyout by a group of private equity and media investors,  will stay on MGM as non-executive chairman of the studio. The studio has been grappling with a massive $3.5 billion debt load stemming from its 2005 buyout by private equity and media firms.

Along with the debt load, MGM , which has not had a major film release since Tom Cruise's "Valkyrie"  in December, has been struggling like other Hollywood studios with  lining up fresh film financing due to the economic crunch and dropping DVD sales.

Not so fast Mr. Icahn. Lions Gate Entertainment is trying to defend itself against famed financier Carl Icahn by hiring an advisory team, including investment bank Morgan Stanley and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz.

It also is in talks to offer a board seat to Mark Rachesky of MHR Fund Management, the studio's largest shareholder.

Icahn controls 14.5 percent of Lions Gate's shares and wants to increase his sway, seemingly because he's frustrated with things like costs and the company's decision to buy the TV Guide cable channel.

Chrysler’s got $4 billion in emergency aid from the U.S. government and has said it will seek another $3 billion in government loans. And yesterday it agreed to form an alliance with Italy’s Fiat as it looks for the road out of the woods.

(The Fiat deal fine print reportedly makes it conditional on Chrysler’s getting that extra U.S. loan.)

But the troubled auto maker is not letting its economic ails keep it from going to the movies.