The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1100 GMT on Tuesday:

** Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd said certain funds affiliated to alternative investment manager Apollo Global Management LLC will take the insurer private in an all-cash transaction valued at $2.6 billion.

** Hong Kong-based insurer FWD Group has agreed to buy HSBC Holdings Plc’s stake in a Malaysian insurance joint venture as part of a plan to expand its presence in Asia, three people familiar with the matter said.

** Qatari lenders Barwa Bank and the International Bank of Qatar have reached a final merger agreement, creating a combined group with total assets of 80 billion riyals ($22 billion), the banks said on Tuesday.

** The merger of DEA, a vehicle of Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, and Wintershall, the oil unit of Germany’s BASF SE, may be signed in the next two weeks, with government approvals taking six months from then, the DEA CEO told Reuters.

** The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s inspector general said there was no evidence of impropriety relating to the proposed, and now defunct, merger of Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media Co, concluding FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had not shown bias in favor of the deal.

** Dominika Kulczyk, one of the richest people in Poland, announced a tender offer to buy 49.8 percent of shares in utility Polenergia to give her full control of the company.

** Norwegian oil firm DNO withdrew its request for seats on the board of Faroe Petroleum amid an escalating war of words between the companies.

** Swedish compressor and vacuum pump maker Atlas Copco is buying U.S.-based Brooks Automation’s cryogenic business in a $675 million cash deal to expand its vacuum technology portfolio, the companies said.

** VMware Inc will acquire CloudHealth Technologies as part of the information technology company’s continued push into cloud-based software services, the company announced.

** In a bid to build on its payment offering and create multiple use cases for it, Amazon Pay is in talks to acquire personal assistant platform Tapzo in a part-stock and part-cash deal, the Economic Times reported.

** Workers at Hellenic Petroleum physically prevented suitors eyeing a majority stake in Greece’s biggest oil refiner from entering two of its sites in protest at plans to privatize the utility, a union spokesman said.

** WeWork’s Flatiron School, the coding boot camp purchased last year by the $40 billion co-working startup, has acquired Designation, a Chicago-based, for-profit design education school, the company told Reuters. (Compiled by Manogna Maddipatla in Bengaluru)