April 18 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1945 GMT on Thursday:

** Nashville-based independent music company Concord has agreed to buy Britain's Hipgnosis Songs Fund for $1.4 billion, the companies said, to gain rights to the catalogues of artists including Shakira and Neil Young.

** Coventry Building Society has offered to buy Britain's Co-operative Bank for 780 million pounds ($971 million) in cash, in the latest attempted tie-up among UK lenders jostling for market share amid fickle demand for loans.

** U.S. law firms Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders and Locke Lord said they are in talks to merge, in what would be the largest law firm combination to emerge so far this year.

** Europe's biggest private equity firm CVC Capital Partners has approached accounting giant Ernst & Young (EY) in a bid to buy its Italian consulting arm, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

** An effort to force TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the social media app or face a ban in the U.S. was gaining steam in Congress , with the House of Representatives setting a vote for Saturday and a key Senate Democrat voicing support for the move.

** Bentley Systems, an engineering software company with a market value of about $15 billion, is exploring options that include a sale after attracting acquisition interest, according to people familiar with the matter.

** Israel's Nilit, a maker of 6.6 nylon fibres for the apparel industry, has formed a joint venture with China's Shenma Industry Co that will significantly expand production capacity within the Asian country, it said.

** Mexican state oil firm Pemex has agreed to hand over control of its Lakach natural gas project in the Gulf of Mexico to Grupo Carso, a company belonging to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, El Heraldo columnist Dario Celis reported.

** Spain's Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said that it was still too early for the government to evaluate a potential stake in Spanish energy firm Naturgy in view of a possible takeover bid by Abu Dhabi's TAQA

** Sri Lankan telecom operator Dialog Axiata has signed a definitive agreement to buy Bharti Airtel's operations in the island nation, the companies said, nearly a year after the merger was announced.

** French media group Vivendi's Canal+ said on Thursday that it has bought 3.7 million shares in South African broadcaster MultiChoice to increase its stake to 40.83%. (Reporting by Priyanka.G and Pratyush Thakur in Bengaluru)