Benzinga's M&A Chatter for Tuesday March 18, 2014

The following are the M&A deals, rumors and chatter circulating on Wall Street for Tuesday March 18, 2014:

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Shares of Mercury Systems

spiked higher Tuesday on a report from the

that the company is undergoing sale process, according to sources. Mercury, a provider of commercially developed, open sensor and Big Data processing systems, software and services for critical commercial, defense and intelligence applications, could reportedly be worth $500 million. A spokesperson for Mercury Systems was not available for comment. Mercury Systems closed Tuesday at $13.17, a gain of 19%.

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MKS Instruments

announced Tuesday, it has agreed to purchase the assets of Granville-Phillips, a division of Brooks Automation, Inc.

, for $87 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in Q2 2014. Brooks Automation closed Tuesday at $11.35 a gain of almost 5%.

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Russian search engine company Yandex

, has acquired Israeli startup KitLocate, a developer of geolocation technology for mobile devices. Terms were not disclosed. Yandex closed Tuesday at $32.03, a gain of almost 7%.