Nedbank Group, headed by Chief Executive Officer Mike Brown, said it plans to use its option to acquire a stake in Togo-based Ecobank Transnational Inc valued at more than USD 500 million.

Canada-based finance company FinanceIt raised USD13 million in a Series A funding round to be used for the expansion of its services to the United States.

Deutsche Telekom is nearing an agreement to sell 70% of its stake in German online-classifieds business Scout24 holding. It will be sold to private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in a deal that would value the business at EUR2 billion.

Massachussetts-based TV advertising platform Clypd raised USD7.2 million in Series A-1 funding from Atlas Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Boston Seed Capital, and angel investors John Battelle and Brightcove.

Singapore's CapitaMalls Asia Ltd. said it would buy a shopping mall located in Guangzhou, China for USD361 million. CapitaMalls Asia would purchase the said property from Chinese Greenland Real Estate.

Desert Hot Springs on Tuesday announced that it would run out of money in March due to higher-than-expected salary and pension costs. It said that it could join other California cities that filed for bankruptcy last year.

Cloud-based recurring revenue management solutions provider Aria Systems was able to get USD 40 million from Bain Capital Ventures and other investors for its fourth funding round.

Three financial sources said Russia-based oil firm Bashneft selected Morgan Stanley, Sberbank, and Barclays as global coordinators for the company's planned secondary listing in London.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch or BofAML has topped Citibank and Morgan Stanley in executing deals in India for the past 11 months, completing transactions worth USD 7.96 billion.

Petroleum company Devon Energy Corp. was nearing a deal to takeover Texas-based GeoSouthern Energy Corp. for USD6 billion. This would be Devon's second large transaction in less than a month.