Deals of the day -- mergers and acquisitions

(Adds Sberbank, VBI, TUI AG, Societe Generale, Lebanese Canadian Bank, ACE Ltd, Penn Millers, Hess, Usiminas, Astorg Partners, Google, Meru, Sinclair Broadcast, AmericanWest, Vivendi, KIDDI Corp, Volkswagen)

Sept 8 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals involving European, U.S. and Asian companies were reported by 1330 GMT on Thursday:

(For Reuters columns on deals, click on )

** Google Inc has bought Zagat, the popular restaurant recommendations and ratings authority, to expand its local content in the niche marketplace that includes Yelp and Yahoo Inc .

** Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) said it would delay a merger with Porsche Automobil Holding SE beyond 2011 and examine other ways of creating an "integrated auto group" amid unresolved legal issues that have come to haunt the maker of the iconic 911 sportscar.

** Vivendi pay-TV unit Canal+ said on Thursday it planned to take a majority stake in channels owned by French billionaire Vincent Bollore, as part of a push into free TV.

** Phone service provider, KDDI Corp has invested roughly 100 million yen ($1.3 million)to take upto 15 percent of equity stake in the French company Total Immersion, a developer of augmented-reality software solutions, report e d Nikkei.

** Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc said it w ill buy seven TV stations run by Four Points Media from Cerberus Capital Management LP for $200 million to expand in Utah, Florida, Texas and Massachusetts.

** U.S. property and casualty insurer ACE Ltd said on Thursday it would buy Penn Millers Holding Corp for $107 million to boost its presence in the booming agricultural insurance sector.

** AmericanWest Bank said it will buy Viking Bank, a unit of Viking Financial Services Corporation, and the shareholders will receive aggregate cash consideration of $7.2 million, or $2.65 per share, as per the deal.

** Hess Corp said on Thursday it spent $750 million to buy acreage in the Utica Shale in Ohio, a day after the company announced a joint venture in that basin with CONSOL Energy .

** Wireless LAN provider Meru Networks Inc said it has bought Identity Networks to expand security capabilities.

** French private equity firm Astorg Partners is in exclusive talks on the $1 billion purchase of a unit of French electrical connectors maker FCI from Bain Capital, backed by 355 million euros ($498.3 million) of debt, sources close to the deal said.

** The Lebanese subsidiary of Societe Generale said it won final approval from the Central Bank to acquire the assets and liabilities of Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCN), raising its total assets to $11 billion.

** Russian steel tycoon Alexei Mordashov raised his stake in TUI AG (TUIGn.DE) above 25 percent from about 20 percent after the German tourism group's shares lost more than half of their value over the past six months.

** Russia's Sberbank has clinched a deal to buy VBI, the eastern European arm of Austrian lender Oesterreichische Volksbanken (OTVVp.VI), for at least 585 million euros ($821 million), gaining a springboard for expansion in the region.

** Brazilian steelmaker CSN made a formal unsolicited bid for the combined stake of two key shareholders in rival Usiminas , local newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo reported on Thursday.

** Canada's Groupe Aeroplan said it bought a minority stake in Cardlytics, a U.S.-based transaction marketing company, for $23 million and signed a long-term deal with it to get access to top retailers.

** PerkinElmer Inc agreed to buy Caliper Life Sciences Inc for $600 million to broaden its reach in molecular imaging and genomic detection technologies.

** Brewer SABMiller is set to launch its formal takeover for Foster's Group within days after an Australian regulator rejected its claim that Foster's had made misleading statements as part of a hostile A$9.5 billion ($10.1 billion) bid battle.

** China's top offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd said a Canadian court had approved its acquisition of struggling oil sands company Opti Canada Inc .

** Encana Corp is nearing a new joint-venture agreement to develop its British Columbia shale gas assets and the deal will have a number of key differences from a failed arrangement with PetroChina , Encana's chief executive said on Wednesday.

** Bolivar Energy Corp and Anatolia Energy Inc said they will merge to create a new international E&P company with principal assets focused in Turkey.

** U.S. private equity firm TPG Capital has agreed a share-swap deal with Indonesian buyout fund Northstar Pacific to improve its access to the Southeast Asian market, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

** Compass Petroleum Ltd sold its Alberta properties to a private company and an affiliate of that company for an aggregate cash consideration of $29.5 million.

** Hitachi Ltd said on Thursday it has bought struggling California-based network storage company BlueArc Corp in an all-cash transaction after a five-year OEM partnership, in the latest such move to take advantage of the yen's strength.

** French utility GDF Suez plans to sell several of its gas assets in the British part of the North sea to Italian oil company and use the money to cut its debt, a French newspaper reported on Thursday.

** U.S. property and casualty insurer Penn Millers Holding Corp said it agreed to be acquired by a unit of bigger rival ACE Ltd for $20.50 per share in cash.

** BASF (BASFn.DE) is poised to sell most of its nitrogen fertiliser assets to Yara International , Bloomberg cited two people familiar with the matter as saying.

** Russia's Sberbank has agreed to buy VBI, the eastern European arm of Austrian lender Oesterreichische Volksbanken (OTVVp.VI), for at least 585 million euros ($821 million), gaining a springboard for expansion in the region, Volksbanken said on Thursday.

** BroadSoft Inc signs definitive agreement to acquire Ilinc Communications Inc in an all-cash transaction.

** DS Smith PLC said it entered into a binding legal agreement with Unipapel S.A. for the sale of Spicers for an enterprise value of 200 million pounds.

($1 = 77.365 Japanese Yen) (Compiled by Ranjita Ganesan and Sumit Jha in Bangalore)