DealZone

News Corp will withdraw its bid for British broadcaster BSkyB, the company said. Breakingviews columnist Chris Hughes writes James Murdoch should stage his own tactical retreat and resign from News Corporation.

Medical device maker Kinetic Concepts said it would go private in a nearly $5 billion cash deal with a consortium of private equity firm Apax Partners and two Canadian pension firms.

Electronic Arts Inc, the video game publisher, is buying PopCap Games in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion as it tries to ramp up its social and casual games portfolio and better compete with Zynga.

Zynga Inc filed paperwork for an initial public offering on Friday, the latest in a series of hot social media companies to seek capital in the U.S. public markets. The company, which is behind a series of popular games on Facebook, said it hoped to raise up to $1 billion. It did not specify the number of shares it plans to sell or give an expected price range.

A group including Apple, Research In Motion and Microsoft will pay $4.5 billion to snatch Nortel Networks’ patents from under the noses of Google and Intel, stealing a march on their rivals in a litigious market. Bankrupt Nortel had put up for sale 6,000 patents and patent applications in the largest public sale of its kind, a potential treasure trove for latecomers to the market such as Apple, Google and Intel.

Belgium’s KBC Group  is expecting around eight to 10 first-round offers for its private banking arm KBL, people familiar with the matter said, after attempts to sell the business for $1.9 billion failed in March. Bidders are expected to include corporate suitors and private equity firms from across the globe, the person said, and a shortlist for the next round will be drawn up in about a week.

A day after LinkedIn’s shares more than doubled in their public trading debut, analysts are scrambling to explain why the stock exploded and figure out what happens next.

The professional networking site’s IPO was being closely watched by Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga to gauge investors’ appetite for Internet companies.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg described a public offering of Facebook shares as “inevitable,” while Evelyn M. Rusli over on DealBook predicts a surge in Internet IPO’s but doesn’t think the market is setting itself up for another tech bubble burst.

Commodities trader Glencore made a steady market debut with shares trading just above the widely expected launch price of 530 pence, giving it solid currency for potential acquisitions.

There was heavy interest in the stock on both the London and Hong Kong exchanges, due in part to the relatively small amount of shares being sold. Glencore’s Chief Executive and largest shareholder Ivan Glasenberg said demand for the shares “significantly” exceeded the amount available.

Analysts on Thursday said the 530 pence per share level was realistic and should mean strong aftermarket support. “Obviously everything is priced to do well. I don’t know whether five to ten percent upside is in the bag or not, but certainly they are trying to please investors with the price,” analyst Tim Dudley at Collins Stewart said.

Google has invested as much as $200 million in social gaming company Zynga, as it looks to bolster its presence in the world of online gaming, according to technology blog TechCrunch.

According to TechCrunch, the investment may have been in conjunction with Softbank Capital's deal to purchase a stake in Zynga, which makes games for social networks including Facebook and MySpace and profits by selling virtual goods.  In June, Nikkei reported that Softbank bought a stake in Zynga for about 13.5 billion yen ($147.4 million) through a private placement.

The site said that The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures and that Zynga will be "the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year." Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 will be $350 million, half of which is operating profit, and is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011, according to the site.

As centers of innovation go, there are worse places to place a bet on the past repeating itself than California’s technology hub. Looking beyond the Internet, housing and credit bubbles, it’s still the preferred playground of such leading financial weathervanes as venture capitalists, gizmo nerds and software studs.

Perhaps Wall Street, searching for reasons to remain optimistic about the market’s summer rally, should take heart from the spate of articles painting pictures of green shoots all over Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal notes that tech IPOs are staging a comeback, and asks if its time to party like it’s 1999?

Our reporting shows that investors, encouraged by a growing number of acquisitions and public stock flotations in the past few months, are keeping a close eye on a coterie of promising startups in Silicon Valley. David Lawsky identified six privately held companies as the ripest for acquisition or readiness to go public, out of 34 cited in industries ranging from alternative energy to social networking.