Benzinga's M&A Chatter for Thursday March 7, 2013

The following are the M&A deals, rumors and chatter circulating on Wall Street for Thursday March 7, 2013:

:

TD Bank

is rumored to be bidding $51 per share to acquire CIT Group

, according to unconfirmed market chatter. A similar rumor was reported on February 8. A spokesperson for CIT Group declined comment. A TD Bank spokesperson was not available. CIT Group closed at $44.48 Thursday, a gain of 3.5% on more than twice average volume.

:

Investor Carl Icahn had reportedly considered a tender offer of $15 per share for Dell

, prior to proposing a special dividend, according to the

. Icahn submitted a letter to Dell's Board, which was published in a 14A filing on Thursday, in which he proposed a $9.00 per share special dividend, as an alternative to the going private proposal at $13.65 per share. Dell closed at $14.22 Thursday, a loss of $0.10 on lower than average volume.

:

Shares of Yelp

spiked sharply higher Thursday afternoon on a report from

that Yahoo

'was working on two “significant” acquisitions and about six smaller talent “acqhires.”' Yelp was not mentioned in the article, but Pinterest, Tumblr and Hulu were mentioned as possible targets. Earlier this week, Amazon

was rumored to be offering to acquire Yelp in the mid $30s. Yelp closed at $23.46 Thursday, a gain of 2% on average volume.

:

Hot Topic

and Sycamore Partners announced Thursday that they have entered into a definitive agreement, pursuant to which Sycamore Partners will acquire Hot Topic for $14.00 per share in cash, or a total of approximately $600 million. The agreement, which has been unanimously approved by Hot Topic's Board of Directors, represents a premium of approximately 30% over Hot Topic's closing stock price on March 6, 2013. Hot Topic closed at $13.87 Thursday, a gain of 29% on 35 times average volume.