US chip-maker Texas Instruments (TI) has announced an agreement to acquire rival National Semiconductor, which will bring together two industry leaders in analog semiconductors.

The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the transaction, under which TI will pay $25 per share for each National share.

UK-based Sable Mining Africa has acquired an 80 per cent stake in Sierra Leone’s Red Rock Mining, it has been announced.

Red Rock holds a 50-year lease at the Bagla Hills iron ore deposit in the south-east of Sierra Leone. Bagla Hills lies about 52 kilometres from Kenema, and forms a continuation of the Western Cluster iron ore deposits across the border with Liberia.

 The lease area covers 206.75 square kilometres in total.

Automobile sales in the United States had their best month for some time in March, with all major manufacturers recording growth in sales, apart from Toyota.

Chrysler sold 121,730 cars and light trucks during the month, a rise of 31 percent over the same month last year, while Nissan sales rose 26.9 percent from 98,468 last year to 121,141—making March an all-time record month for Nissan North America.

UK-based Pan African Resources has been awarded a mining licence on its Manica exploration project in Mozambique.

The mining licence, converted from a prospecting licence, gives Pan African—an African-focused gold mining company—the ability to move the project forward to development stage.

The Manica licence area is situated in central Mozambique, approximately four kilometres north of Manica, which lies about 270 kilometres inland from the port city of Beira.

World events are starting to have an impact on the US and other major economies, dampening the feeling of optimism that had been growing in the early months of this year.

The Credit Managers’ Index (CMI) for March 2011, prepared by the National Association of Credit Management, fell from 64.1 in February to 62.2 in March, reflecting a decline in sales, new credit applications, dollar collections and the amount of credit extended.

Lockheed Martin is to design and deliver an upgraded anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training target under a $5.4 million contract from the US Navy.

Known as EMATTs (short for MK39 Expendable Mobile Anti-submarine Warfare Training Targets) the targets are used by air and surface crews for unrestricted, open-ocean and on-range anti-submarine warfare training.

Designed to simulate the movements and sounds of diesel submarines, EMATTs help crews maintain their anti-submarine combat skills.

UK-based oil and gas services provider Petrofac has won a contract worth over $240 million (£149 million) from Shell Iraq to develop facilities in the Majnoon Field.

Under the terms of the contract, Petrofac is providing engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction management services for the development of a new early production system, consisting of two trains each with capacity for 50,000 barrels of oil per day, as well as the upgrading of existing brownfield facilities.

Regular readers of the Business Excellence magazines will be familiar with our coverage of exotic locations and luxurious hotel resorts. Indeed, we currently have a magazine issue on our home page dedicated to the genre, under the headline “the greatest of escapes”.

The World Trade Organization has ruled that Boeing did receive subsidies “inconsistent” with the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement, but not nearly as much as had been claimed by Europe on behalf of Airbus.

European countries had complained that Airbus had suffered because of payments and/or incentives to Boeing amounting to $19.1 billion between 1989 and 2006.

Ireland’s Conroy Gold and Natural Resources has announced positive results on its drilling programme at Clay Lake in County Armagh.

Clay Lake covers an area of around 141 hectares and has returned the highest gold-in-soil values recorded by Conroy on its Irish exploration licences. The current drilling programme builds on the company’s previous positive gold results, which revealed the presence of a broad zone of gold mineralisation.