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Thomson Reuters to Acquire Complinet

June 3, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Thomson Reuters is to acquire Complinet, a leading provider of global compliance information solutions for financial services institutions and their advisers. Terms of the deal, expected to close in the second quarter, were not disclosed.

Complinet was founded in 1997. It is headquarted in London, with offices in offices in New York, Sydney, Singapore and Dubai. The company has more than 200 employees.

Complinet services are provided to industry professionals in more than 1,900 firms across 81 countries. Complinet’s services will complement the Thomson Reuters existing professional information and software assets in the global legal and financial markets.

Chris Pilling, Complinet CEO and founder, said the deal with Thomson Reuters is the important next step in Complinet’s natural evolution. “The acquisition by Thomson Reuters will allow Complinet to fully realize its vision, backed by the reach and resources of Thomson Reuters,” he said. “Current customers will only see improvements to the unique services and quality they have come to expect from Complinet. Moving forward, we will see the true potential of this business when aligned with the scale and global footprint of Thomson Reuters.”

Pilling will continue to lead Complinet and the business will continue to serve its clients as before. Pilling will report to Peter Warwick, chief executive officer of Thomson Reuters, Legal, and will work closely with businesses pan-Thomson Reuters to fully leverage current global regulatory compliance assets within both the Markets and Professional divisions.

Location: USA, New York & UK, London

Ref: F231109-476

Tengelmann buys into eRetailer Baby-Markt.de

June 2, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Tengelmann E-Commerce-Beteiligungs GmbH, a subsidiary of Tengelmann Group, has acquired a 49.9% stake in Spiel & Baby GmbH, owners of Baby-Markt.de.

Baby-Markt.de was founded in 2003 by Albert Lütgenau in Dortmund. It employs employs 90 staff and dispatches up to 4,000 consignments of baby and toddler items daily. The range comprises approx. 12,000 in-stock items. Sales in 2009 amounted to over €30 million.

“We have found a strong partner in Tengelmann, who will enable us to continue to achieve our ambitious growth targets, in particular in the development of our market position in Germany and the expansion in further European countries,” said Albert Lütgenau, managing partner of Baby-Markt.de.

“Baby-Markt.de is one of the leading online retailers and therefore fits perfectly with our e-commerce strategy. I am particularly pleased that Spiel & Baby GmbH is also an owner-managed business, like Tengelmann,” explained Karl-Erivan W. Haub, managing partner of the Tengelmann Group.

Tengelmann also took stakes in online retailers brands4friends and Zalando earlier this year

Tengelmann E-Commerce-Beteiligungs GmbH, based in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Since the end of 2009, the subsidiary of the Tengelmann Group has been investing in fast growing young enterprises and has already become a significant start-up investor in Germany. The investment focus is on e-commerce and social commerce concepts, market places as well as Internet and Web 2.0 technologies.

Location: Germany, Mülheim an der Ruhr

Ref: F231109-475

Posted in e-Commerce, ~Europe. Leave a Comment »

Centaur Media has acquired for Taxbriefs £1.9 million

June 2, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Centaur Media PLC has acquired Taxbriefs Holdings Ltd for a consideration of £1.9 million, payable in cash.

Taxbriefs is a leading provider of tax information and advice to the retail financial products community. It produces a variety of paid for financial publications and content-based marketing support materials for independent financial advisers (IFAs), life and pension companies, financial examination providers and tax specialists. Taxbriefs also organizes a number of technical conferences.

Taxbriefs was founded in 1975. The company directors were Danby Bloch, editorial director and with the company from the start; Mark Hayes-Newington, CEO; Helen Macdonald, publishing director; Robert McKay, non-executive director.

The announcement says, “Taxbriefs has established an excellent reputation over many years as a supplier of high need content to the IFA community. We are very excited by the opportunities that this acquisition is expected to bring. Under Centaur’s ownership, Taxbriefs will enjoy significant marketing advantages through its association with Money Marketing. In addition, following the recent launch of the Money Marketing Academy, the acquisition of Taxbriefs strengthens Centaur’s position as the leading provider of specialist information to support IFA training and professional development in the more demanding environment which is being introduced by the recent Retail Distribution Review.”

Location: UK, London

Ref: F231109-474

Posted in Content Media, Publishers, ~Europe. Leave a Comment »

Bigpoint acquire games development studio Radon Labs

June 1, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Bigpoint GmbH, a leading developer of in browser-based video games, has acquired Game development studio Radon Labs. Radon Labs recently filed for bankruptcy due to financial concerns.

Bigpoint gains more than 35 new employees, including Radon Labs Managing Directors Bernd Beyreuther and Andre Blechschmidt, who will remain with Bigpoint and direct its newly established Berlin office.
“Under Bernd and Andre’s leadership, Radon Labs became one of Germany’s top three development studios,” said Bigpoint CEO and Founder, Heiko Hubertz. “We’re excited to add their highly qualified workforce to Bigpoint as we continue to push the limits of what’s possible in online gaming. This acquisition is also greater proof that the market continues to consolidate. As such, we plan to purchase additional studios, both in Germany and abroad, to support our long-term growth strategy.”

Location: Germany, Hamburg

Ref: F231109-472

Posted in Content Media, Games, Internet Media, ~Europe. Leave a Comment »

Zodiak close to completing on the acquisition of RDF

June 1, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Sources close to the company claim Zodiak Entertainment’s acquisition of UK independent TV distributor RDF Media Group is almost complete and may close as early as this this week.

RDF was founded in 1993. Current shows include “Genius of Britain”, “Location Location Location”, “How the Other Half Live” and “Dickinson’s Real Deal”. The company was floated on AIM in May 2005 and subsequently was acquired by a consortium of the RDF management team and funds managed by Cyrte Investments BV. As a result RDF delisted from AIM on 2 February 2009. In the year to 31 January 2009, the Group generated revenues of approximately £131m.

The deal was originally expected to close almost two months ago. Reports say that it is a complex deal not helped by the fact that Zodiac is in incorporated in France, owned by an Italian operation and ofcourse RDF is UK incorporated.

Location: France, Paris and UK, London

Ref: F231109-471

Posted in Broadcasting, Content Media, ~Europe. Leave a Comment »

Thomson Reuters acquires Point Carbon

May 27, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Thomson Reuters has agreed to acquire Point Carbon A/S, a Norwegian-based leading provider of essential trading analytics, news and content for the energy and environmental markets.

This acquisition strengthens Thomson Reuters offerings to the energy sector through the combination of Point Carbon’s critical insight, market fundamentals and powerful analytics of key price drivers with Thomson Reuters leading news and pricing service.

Point Carbon provides banks, traders, portfolio managers, corporations and governments with critical insights based on deep industry knowledge and sophisticated modelling capabilities across the carbon, power, and gas markets. Point Carbon’s valuable demand, supply and price predictive models are based on proprietary data collection and are used by thousands of traders and analysts globally.

Technological advances are increasing the breadth, depth and frequency with which information is available on physical commodity flows and fundamentals, such as power production, consumption and weather, as well as events like political actions or operational outages. As global economic development continues to boost energy needs in a carbon constrained world, the combination of Thomson Reuters and Point Carbon will deliver the critical information and tools to allow market participants to optimize their business, investment and trading strategies in this evolving marketplace.

Shaun Sibley, Global Head of Commodities & Energy, Thomson Reuters, said, “This acquisition underscores Thomson Reuters commitment to the global energy markets and supports our growth plans for our leading commodity and energy business. Thomson Reuters clients will benefit from greater expertise and highly innovative technologies that will provide further granularity and a more sophisticated view of market conditions and their impact on price and trading. We will look to expanding our business to new customers, geographies and asset classes.”

Per-Otto Wold, CEO and Co-founder of Point Carbon, said, “Point Carbon has experienced excellent growth over the last 10 years and currently holds leading positions in our areas of focus. I truly believe that combining Thomson Reuters and Point Carbon is an excellent union of forces that will take Point Carbon to the next level.”

Following integration, Point Carbon content will be available through Thomson Reuters Eikon, the company’s new desktop offering to be launched later this year. In addition Reuters Insider, Thomson Reuters recently launched financial video platform, will begin broadcasting from Oslo and elsewhere around the world programs on the energy and environmental markets using Point Carbon’s analysts and proprietary data.

The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Location: Norway, Oslo

Ref: F231109-467

Poken raises $1.8 million

May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Swiss businees Poken, a business that describes itself as bridging online and real world social networking, has received a strategic investment from Swisscom Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Swisscom AG – Switzerland’s leading telecom operator. Swisscom is participating in a $1.8 million round, and will be represented on Poken’s Board of Directors by Dominique Mégret, Head of Swisscom Ventures, a seasoned executive and entrepreneur.

Poken is helping customers build solutions for bridging the gap between online and offline social networking needs. The new pokenEVENT service offering is gaining significant traction in the events and corporate networking space — helping customers such as Adobe, BMW, IBM, Microsoft and Tempo Music host powerful networking events. In addition, event organizers such as PublicisLive — host of the World Economic Forum — have also used the pokenEVENT networking platform to help reduce the clutter of business cards and streamline the process for distributing digital materials at their events.

“Over the last 6 months Poken has narrowed its focus and is building a world-class suite of hardware and software solutions to meet the needs of the events and corporate networking space” said Stephane Doutriaux, CEO of Poken. “We believe Swisscom can add considerable fuel to our growth, as well as provide assistance in working with leading event organizers and corporate partners. This is a significant partnership for Poken, our customers, and our network of resellers.”

Location: Switzerland, Lausanne

Ref: F231109-454

Posted in Conference/Exhibitions/Events, Content Media, Internet Media, ~Europe. Leave a Comment »

Huddle raises $10.2 million

May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Huddle, the company that lets you connect and work securely with other people in the cloud, today announced that it has closed a $10.2 million Series B round of funding led by Matrix Partners, with participation from existing investors Eden Ventures and Charles McGregor, Huddle’s chairman.

Huddle, which employs more than 40 staff in the UK and U.S. and recently became cashflow positive, expects to quadruple in size in the next year. Including the most recent investment, Huddle has raised in excess of $15 million in equity funding since its launch in 2007. The company is using the capital to expand its U.S. presence and build a team in San Francisco led by its newly relocated co-founder, Andy McLoughlin.

“Huddle makes it possible for people to connect and work with each other regardless of their location. However, for us as a company it’s crucial to be closer to the people who use our product,” said Mr. McLoughlin. “With more than 50 percent of Huddle users based in the U.S. our intention is to give them even more on-the-ground support.”

TweetDeck raises $3 million

May 20, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

TweetDeck, an Adobe AIR desktop Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace application, has raised $3 million in Series B funding, led by their largest backers Betaworks.

Previous backers Accelerator Group, Roger Ehrenberg and Howard Lindzon, as well as new investors Ron Conway and Danny Rimer also participated. TweetDeck has now raised $5.3 million.

Yell buys Trusted places

May 20, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Yell has acquired Trusted Places Limited, the company behind the popular UK local reviews website trustedplaces.com.

The purchase means that Yell will, for the first time, enable consumers to recommend a local business through its Yell.com website.

The combination of Yell’s database of over two million businesses with TrustedPlaces’ proven expertise in generating recommendations from local consumers represents a major shake-up of the fast-growing local reviews market.

It will drive strong benefit to Yell’s 399,000 mainly small business advertisers, through generating additional leads and providing a richer online interaction with existing and potential new consumers.

Mark Canon, president of new media at Yell in the UK, said: “This represents a significant growth opportunity. We all know that recommendations help local businesses to attract new consumers, so Yell.com and TrustedPlaces are a perfect fit.”

Initially, TrustedPlaces reviews will be added to Yell’s business listings, leading to full integration under the Yell.com domain.

The company also expects that the techniques and technologies that have made TrustedPlaces successful in the UK will be shared with other Yell Group operating companies in the US, Spain and Latin America.

Under the deal, Sokratis Papafloratos, chief executive and co-founder of TrustedPlaces, is joining Yell as head of social products in the UK.

He said: “The internet gives customers more influence in the reputation of a local business than ever before.

“This exciting partnership gives businesses the opportunity to harness the power of recommendations like never before.”

TrustedPlaces was launched in late 2006. The private equity backed startup now attracts around 700,000 unique users a month looking for recommendations on local businesses across a range of key categories. These cover, for example, Restaurants, Bars and Pubs, Hotels and Travel, Beauty and Spas, Shopping and Home Maintenance and Repairs, which includes services such as plumbers.

Location: UK, London

Ref: F231109-448

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