Lionsgate will buy Starz for $4.4 billion, the buyer said in a news release Thursday. The deal “significantly increases the combined company's content creation capabilities, enhances its leadership in premium scripted programming and scales its global distribution footprint” across platforms, it said. It's expected to “accelerate the growth of Lionsgate and Starz's own” over-the-top services, said Lionsgate. The combined company will include a 16,000-title film and TV library, 87 original series on 42 U.S. networks, a $7 billion feature film business and “the STARZ platform” reaching 24 million, it said. It "will enable us to compete successfully in today's rapidly evolving global entertainment marketplace," said Lionsgate Chairman Mark Rachesky. The buyer said both companies' boards approved, and shareholders and regulators will be asked for their OK's.

AT&T completed an acquisition of over-the-top video partner Quickplay Media from private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners, the telco said in a news release. The deal was announced in May (see 1605160025). Quickplay is the platform provider for AT&T U-Verse and its TV Everywhere and will support DirecTV streaming services to be introduced later this year, AT&T said Tuesday.

Cisco will pay $293 million to acquire cloud security vendor CloudLock, Cisco said in a news release Tuesday. CloudLock sells cloud access security broker technology to enterprise customers, providing data and analytics about user activity and sensitive data. CloudLock employees will join Cisco’s networking and security business group, Cisco said. The deal is expected to close in Q1, subject to customary closing conditions, it said.

ON Semiconductor extended its previously announced tender offer -- to acquire the outstanding shares of Fairchild Semiconductor for $20 per share -- which expired Thursday. The latest extension expires July 7 at 11:59 p.m. EDT, said ON. It has received some 46.16 million shares of Fairchild common stock, not including 4.68 million shares tendered by notice of guaranteed delivery for shares not yet delivered. All other terms and conditions are unchanged, said the company. Terms of the merger agreement require successive 10-business-day extensions, and ON Semiconductor “currently intends to continue making such successive extensions,” it said. The initial purchase offer was made Dec. 4.

The FTC signed off on Comcast's acquisition of DreamWorks Animation, the agency said in an early termination notice Monday. Comcast has said it expects to conclude the $3.8 billion deal by year's end (see 1604280010).

Twitter is seeking to deepen its machine-learning capabilities after acquiring Magic Pony Technology, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a Monday blog post announcing the deal. Magic Pony is a London developer of machine-learning techniques for visual processing. The acquired technology “will be used to enhance our strength in live video and opens up a whole lot of exciting creative possibilities for Twitter,” Dorsey said. The deal builds on other recent machine-learning investments for Twitter, including acquisitions of Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015, he said. No terms were disclosed.

Bose agreed to transfer ownership of its audio plants in San Luis, Mexico, and Penang, Malaysia, to Flex in return for gaining “greater access” to Flex's supply-chain solutions, the companies said in a Thursday announcement. Bose has sourced products from Flex for more than a year, and the agreement is an expansion of their "strategic partnership," they said. The San Luis plant opened in 1990 and the Penang plant in 2013, they said. Both produce headphones, wireless speakers, home theater systems and pro audio equipment products, and have a combined work force of 3,500 employees, most of whom Flex will keep on, they said. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

Symantec agreed to buy web security company Blue Coat for $4.65 billion in cash, it said Monday. Blue Coat CEO Greg Clark will be named CEO of Symantec after the close of the deal in Q3, succeeding Ajei Gopal, interim chief operating officer, it said. The combined operations will offer security solutions across hundreds of millions of endpoints and servers and billions of email and web transactions, said Symantec. The combined company will help enterprises secure their cloud offerings and consolidate R&D efforts, bringing together more than 3,000 engineers and researchers and nine threat response centers, it said.

T-Mobile is buying 700 MHz spectrum from AT&T's Leap Licenseco covering 10.9 million people in the Chicago metro area, T-Mobile said Wednesday. The FCC must approve the deal. "T-Mobile will have 700MHz A-block spectrum that covers all of the top 10 US markets and is capable of covering 269 million Americans -- or 83 percent of the US population -- with Extended Range LTE,” T-Mobile said in a news release. T-Mobile said it has executed 23 different agreements to add A-block spectrum since it bought its first 700 MHz A-block spectrum form Verizon two years ago. “We already cover 309 million people with our blazing-fast LTE network, and now, T-Mobile Extended Range LTE will be in the 10 biggest markets in the country,” said CEO John Legere. “We won’t stop there.” BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk said the deal shows the intrinsic value of low-band spectrum. "Despite the threat of the incentive auction looming in the coming months and T-Mobile effectively being the ONLY real buyer for this spectrum, the seller was able to hold out for $420 million ($3.21/MHz/POP), which was more than twice the value paid for this license back in 2011," Piecyk wrote investors. "This underscores the intrinsic value of spectrum and why operators pay up to gain access to needed network coverage and capacity even when simply negotiating with a counter-party spectrum owner who does not intend to build [out] their license."

The FTC approved Vonage and Oracle acquisitions of cloud companies, in early termination notices Friday. The commission OK’ed Vonage’s $230 million acquisition of Nexmo, a communications platform-as-a-service company. Also, the FTC approved Oracle’s $663 million acquisition of Textura, which provides construction contracts and payment management cloud services. The Vonage deal was announced in a May 5 news release and the Oracle deal was announced in an April 28 news release.