May 17 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Wednesday:

** South African retail group Steinhoff said it was kicking off a process to separately list its African retail businesses on the Johannesburg stock exchange which it said would avoid those assets being undervalued.

** Brazil approved the planned merger of Dow Chemical Co and DuPont, conditioned on a global divestment plan including its Brazilian corn seed business.

** An affiliate of private equity firm Warburg Pincus sold a 25 percent stake in Indian non-bank lender Capital First Ltd for 17.67 billion rupees ($275.4 million) in stock market transactions.

** Big stock exchange mergers are currently off the table for German stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse following a failed attempt to link up with London Stock Exchange , CEO Carsten Kengeter said.

** Britain has sold its last remaining stake in Lloyds Banking Group, making the lender the first to re-emerge from British state ownership in a symbolic step for the country's recovering banking sector.

** Swiss trading giant Glencore and U.S. private equity investor Carlyle Group have teamed up in an attempt to buy Morocco's only oil refinery, hoping to recoup about $600 million in loans they issued to the plant before it went bankrupt, industry sources said.

** Shanghai Pharmaceutical Holding Co Ltd said it may bid for Stada Arzneimittel AG - a move that would pit it against buyout firms Bain and Cinven which have made a joint offer of nearly $6 billion for the German generics drugmaker.

** Bankers are preparing around 800 million euros of debt financing to back a potential sale of German packaging group Constantia Labels, banking sources said.

** Russia's largest oil producer Rosneft and Italian energy company Eni have signed an agreement to broaden cooperation, including in possible joint oil product supplies to Egypt, Rosneft said.

** Israel's Delek Drilling and Avner Oil , both units of conglomerate Delek Group, said they have completed a long-awaited merger and will begin trading next week as one company.

** Energy group Czech Coal has extended its 10 billion crown ($420 million) offer to buy the Pocerady coal-fired power plant from Czech utility CEZ, it said, giving more time for the deal to overcome state objections. (Compiled by Sruthi Shankar and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru)