Deals of the day- Mergers and acquisitions

Nov 27 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Friday: ** Investment bank Lazard Ltd is working with Sanofi's management to prepare a sale or listing of its Merial animal health unit, aiming to land the leading advisory job for the deal, which could value the business at up 12 billion euros ($12.7 billion), sources familiar with the matter said. ** UBM Plc is in the final stages of discussions to divest PR Newswire Association LLC, with Cision and Vista Equity Partners Management LLC competing to acquire the press release distributor, people familiar with the matter said. ** Spain's Grupo Villar Mir, core shareholder of OHL , agreed to sell the Madrid skyscraper Torre Espacio to the Philippine company Emperador for 558 million euros ($591 million), a source at the group said. ** U.S. oil services provider Halliburton Co refiled a request for EU antitrust approval of its $35 billion bid for smaller rival Baker Hughes, four months after regulators rejected an earlier application because of insufficient data. ** NextEra Energy Inc's renewable energy unit agreed to sell two natural gas-fired power generation plants to a unit of Energy Future Holdings in a $1.59 billion deal. ** China's largest wireless carrier China Mobile said it planned to acquire its sister company's fixed line telecom business for 31.88 billion yuan ($4.99 billion) to help boost its presence in that business in China. ** South African media and e-commerce group Naspers is considering raising $2.5 billion to partly fund the acquisition of an additional stake in Russian online classified business, Avito, it said. ** Telecom Italia said it had formally launched a process to sell about 45 percent of its tower company Inwit but said so far no offers had been tabled. ** French private bank Oddo & Cie challenged Chinese investor Fosun by launching a counter-bid to buy BHF Kleinwort Benson that valued the Anglo-German lender at 760 million euros ($805 million). ** U.S. buyout fund KKR and the directors of French call centre operator Webhelp have agreed to buy the company from its owner Charterhouse, Webhelp's directors said. ** Rosneft acquired a bitumen plant and a chain of gas stations in Armenia for $40 million, the company said. ** Swiss lender BSI dropped exclusive talks with Veneto Banca on a possible acquisition of the Italian lender's private banking unit Banca Intermobiliare, Veneto Banca said. (Compiled by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru)