Southwest Airlines has announced it will bid a minimum of $113.6 million for its low-fare rival Frontier Airlines, which is currently operating under bankruptcy protection.

FirstRand, South Africa's biggest financial services group, has agreed a strategic partnership with China's second-largest bank China Construction Bank (CCB), it was announced yesterday.

Microsoft and Yahoo! have signed a ten-year search and advertising partnership in an attempt to rival market-leading search giant Google.  Under the terms of the agreement, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft will handle the search technology and Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! will drive the sales for search advertising.  MicrosoftÔÇÖs recently-released Bing search engine will be the search and paid search platform for Yahoo!ÔÇÖs sites. Google currently holds more than 70 percent of the global market for paid search results. Yahoo!

Microsoft and Yahoo! have signed a ten-year search and advertising partnership in an attempt to rival market-leading search giant Google.  Under the terms of the agreement, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft will handle the search technology and Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! will drive the sales for search advertising.  MicrosoftÔÇÖs recently-released Bing search engine will be the search and paid search platform for Yahoo!ÔÇÖs sites.  Google currently holds more than 70 percent of the global market for paid search results. Yahoo!

Microsoft and Yahoo! have signed a ten-year search and advertising partnership in an attempt to rival market-leading search giant Google.  Under the terms of the agreement, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft will handle the search technology and Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! will drive the sales for search advertising.  MicrosoftÔÇÖs recently-released Bing search engine will be the search and paid search platform for Yahoo!ÔÇÖs sites.   Google currently holds more than 70 percent of the global market for paid search results. Yahoo!

Cadbury plc, the worldÔÇÖs second-largest confectionery maker, has almost tripled its net profits in the first half of this year, it announced yesterday.

Sprint Nextel has agreed to purchase Virgin Mobile USA for $483 million, in a bid to strengthen its position in the fast-growing prepaid cell phone market. Kansas-based Sprint, the third-largest US wireless carrier, already has a 31 percent stake in New Jersey-based Virgin Mobile USA, which will now become a prepaid Sprint brand.

Spanish banking group Santander has reported a 30 per cent jump in pre-tax profits for its UK arm in the first half of this year.

Global life and material sciences company Royal Dutch DSM has sold its wholly-owned subsidiary DSM Energy to Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa) for an enterprise value of Ôé¼285 million, it was announced today.