Mergers & Acquisitions

St. Louis -- Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc. has appointed Sharon Price John, 49, as CEO, effective immediately. John, who previously served as president of Stride Rite Children’s Group, a division of Wolverine Worldwide, succeeds company founder Maxine Clark, who is retiring as CEO. Clark will remain on the board of directors.

Fort Worth, Texas – RadioShack Corp. has promoted Marty Amschler to senior VP of franchise.

Amschler, who has been with RadioShack since 2009, will continue overseeing dealer franchise operations and also provide senior leadership to the company's commercial sales division and B2B sales team. He has close to 40 years of retail executive experience and previously held sales and franchise positions at companies including Kinney Shoe Corporation, The Athlete's Foot and NexCen Brands.

Lubbock, Texas -- United Supermarkets has completed a transaction to acquire Llano Logistics. Llano has operated United’s two distribution centers – in Lubbock and Roanoke – since their opening.

The deal closed May 31 and means Llano, which had been owned by Exel, a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL, is now owned by United.

It is the company’s third subsidiary operation in addition to its 52-store supermarket/ convenience store chain. United purchased R.C. Taylor Distributing in 2007 and added Praters Foods in 2009.

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Office Depot has reached an agreement to sell its 50% stake in Office Depot de Mexico S.A. de C.V. to its joint venture partner Grupo Gigante, S.A.B. de C.V. for roughly $690 million in cash.

Office Depot de Mexico, which was founded in 1994 as a joint partnership between Office Depot and Grupo Gigante, has more than 248 stores throughout Mexico and Central America and more than $1.1 billion in annual sales.

New Orleans -- Stirling Properties and JCH Development have announced a joint venture to develop the first 6,000-sq. ft. building of Magnolia Marketplace Shopping Center in New Orleans at the intersection of South Claiborne Avenue and Fourth Street. A second phase of the development will commence this fall at South Claiborne and Toledano.

New York – Law firm Harwood Feffer LLP is launching an investigation into claims against the board of directors of rue21 Inc. regarding the proposed purchase of the company by Apax Partners. On May 23, rue21 announced a definitive agreement for Apax to buy it, with stockholders receiving $42 in cash per share.

Armonk, N.Y. -- IBM on Tuesday strengthened its position in the fast-growing market for cloud-computing services with the news that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SoftLayer Technologies Inc. The Dallas-based firm is the world's largest privately held cloud computing infrastructure provider, according to IBM.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But reports, including one by the New York Times, valued it at approximately $2 billion,

Tokyo -- A Sunday report by Bloomberg said that 7-Eleven parent Seven & I Holdings Co. is planning more acquisitions here and may more than double the number of c-store stores it operates in North America.

The company “could increase our store number to 20,000 or even 30,000 [in North America],” chairman Toshifumi Suzuki told Bloomberg in an interview.  7-Eleven currently has more than 8,000 convenience stores in North America.

No time-frame for the planned expansion has been defined.