Deals of the day-Mergers and acquisitions
(Adds Polyus, Allstate Corp, Lyft Inc, Deutsche Bank, Hellenic Petroleum)
April 3 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Wednesday:
** Malaysia will sell a superyacht allegedly bought with stolen funds from state fund 1MDB to casino operator Genting Malaysia Bhd for $126 million, in the first major asset sale by Kuala Lumpur to recover billions lost from the fund.
** Saudi Arabia's AlRajhi Holding Group and Dubai's Al Ghurair have teamed up in a consortium to bid for Saudi Arabian state grain buyer SAGO's flour mills, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
** A specialist fund run by BlackRock could be given extra time to bid for troubled Italian lender Carige, three sources familiar with the matter said.
** Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank are divided over the pace of their merger talks, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
** Billionaire investor Carl Icahn sold his roughly 2.7 percent stake in Lyft Inc ahead of the ride-hailing company's initial public offering, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.
** U.S. insurer Allstate Corp has entered into exclusive talks to sell a book of insurance policies from an area where it no longer generates new business to smaller peer FGL Holdings, people familiar with the matter said.
** Commerzbank's executive board is due to decide on April 9 whether to intensify merger talks with Deutsche Bank or back away from a deal, German business weekly Wirtschaftswoche said.
** Shares in French construction materials company St Gobain rose, which traders and fund managers attributed to media reports of a possible sale of an asset to a Chinese company.
** Dubai's Emirates NBD said it will buy Turkey's Denizbank from Russia's Sberbank at a roughly 20 percent discount to a previously agreed price, after a steep fall in the Turkish lira.
** Roche Holding said its effort to expand in gene therapy via the $4.3 billion takeover of Spark Therapeutics remained on track despite failing to get enough votes to clinch the deal and as U.S. regulators continued scrutinizing it.
** The controlling shareholder of Polyus, Russia's largest gold producer, said it would sell a 3.5 percent stake in the company via an accelerated bookbuilding (ABB).
** No binding bids have been submitted for a majority stake in Greece's biggest oil refiner Hellenic Petroleum, dealing a blow to a key part of a planned sell-off of state assets mandated by international bailouts. (Compiled by Saumya Sibi Joseph and Soundarya J in Bengaluru)
