Viacom has sold its loss making business Harmonix Music Systems to to Harmonix-SBE Holdings, an affiliate of investment firm Columbus Nova. Harmonix is the make of the “Rock Band” video games.
Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed. Viacom had announced its intention to sell Harmonix in November. The Harmonix business has been hitting Viacom’s earnings as the video games sector slowes down.
Shares of Viacom closed down 42 cents at $45.67.
USA, New York, NY
Jesta Group has acquired Fox Mobile Group (FMG) from News Corporation. A leading global entertainment provider, FMG includes such well-known consumer brands as Jamba, Jamster, Mobizzo and iLove, as well as Bitbop, a mobile video service and entertainment platform launched in the U.S. in early 2010. FMG, which will be renamed and become a part of Jesta Mobile Holdings, is co-headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and Beverly Hills, California, and operates in North America, Europe, South America and Australia.
“We believe that mobile entertainment is an important emerging market and we are excited about this acquisition and the opportunities for growth it presents”, said Jason Aintabi, president of Jesta Group. “FMG’s unique ten-year history in mobile entertainment services; its stature as a trusted partner with carriers and device manufacturers; and its many successful consumer brands give it a clear advantage in this rapidly developing sector. We look forward to working with the many talented and dedicated global employees of FMG and to a very bright future for the company and its brands.”
Mark Anderson, COO of FMG, added: “We are all very excited to grow this business under Jesta Group’s leadership, and to build upon the solid base established under News Corp.’s stewardship.”
Jesta Group is a diversified company with a long history as a leading investor in all classes of global real estate and hospitality as well as in other important sectors of the economy, notably in the fields of manufacturing, technology and aviation. Jesta is headquartered in London, Paris, Montreal and New York.
Allen & Company LLC served as financial advisor to News Corporation on the transaction.
The transaction was completed on December 22, 2010. Financial details were not disclosed.
USA, New York, NY
Related articles
AOL has is to acquire about.me, a product that empowers people to create a single personal profile page that presents their online identities together in one place, simplifying the social experience across the web. This includes profiles on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, email, personal blogs and more. Upon completion of the acquisition, co-founder Tony Conrad and his team will join the Consumer Applications Group led by Brad Garlinghouse and will be based in AOL’s Palo Alto, CA offices. Deal terms were not disclosed. about.me is set to join other strategic acquisitions made by AOL in 2010 including StudioNow, 5min Media, TechCrunch, Thing Labs and most recently, Pictela.
“AOL has an incredible vision for how content on the internet is changing – and how they will help shape its evolution. The combination of about.me and AOL is a natural fit as we think about what a more personalized web experience looks like for every individual online”.“about.me is more than just the aggregation of social profiles, it allows people to easily express themselves in an increasingly noisy environment full of disparate social experiences,” said Brad Garlinghouse, President of Consumer Applications, AOL. “Creating smart online identities for consumers can have an incredibly positive impact on AOL’s content and advertising strategy as it gives us the ability to provide relevant and meaningful content to consumers. The team at about.me has built an incredibly compelling product and we look forward to having them join the team.”
Founded by Tony Conrad, Timothy Young and Ryan Freitas, about.me provides a simple, cohesive way to give consumers full control of how people view their online lives. In addition to tying together an individual’s social profiles, about.me provides analytics allowing users to track how many people viewed their profile pages and which social networks they went on to view from there – providing users with deeper insight into how best to build and market their online “selves”. As a part of AOL, it will help the company enhance the experience consumers have with the entire AOL network from AOL Mail and AIM to content sites like Engadget and Popeater.
USA, Palo Alto, CA
Related articles:
eBay has reached a definitive agreement to acquire all of the shares of brands4friends, Germany’s largest online shopping club for fashion and lifestyle, for cash at a transaction value of approximately $200 million (€150 million). The move is designed to strengthen eBay’s position as a leading online fashion destination in Europe. eBay already generates more than $5.4 billion in clothing, shoes and accessories merchandise volume annually.
The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011.
Germany’s largest online shopping club, brands4friends sells high-quality goods from renowned fashion and lifestyle brands at reduced prices to members through limited special offers on a daily basis. Founded in 2007, brands4friends has approximately 3.5 million members in Germany, and has held a wide variety of campaigns with more than 600 top brands, including international fashion brands such as Buffalo, Calvin Klein and Diesel. The company, which employs approximately 200 people, is headquartered in Berlin.
“We want to give our customers the best possible fashion experience online,” said Doug McCallum, Senior Vice President for eBay in Europe. “With the acquisition of brands4friends, we will enter the online shopping club market with an established and dynamic partner who has the expertise, relationships and passion to match our own ambition. We expect many eBay customers will enjoy great deals on international fashion brands by joining the brands4friends community.”
Online shopping clubs are a fast growing part of the online fashion market, and now account for approximately 20 percent of online fashion sales in Europe, according to eBay’s own research.
“eBay is the perfect partner for us,” said Sergio Dias, Chief Executive Officer of brands4friends. “We are able to bring our retail and brand competence and industry knowledge to eBay, and we can expect to benefit from eBay’s traffic and ecommerce experience to accelerate the growth of our shopping community.”
As part of the deal eBay will assume brands4friends’ equity interests in U.K. shopping club SecretSales.com and in Japan, brands4friends.jp.
USA, San Jose, CA & Germany, Berlin
Related articles:
Banks.com, an operator of financial services focused media properties, has acquired FileLater.com, a leader in the online tax extension industry and a portfolio of tax-related Internet domains.
“The acquisition of FileLater and its portfolio of tax-related domain names fits like a glove with our go-forward strategy and makes us a dominant player in the online tax extension industry,” said Dan O’Donnell, President and Chief Executive Officer of Banks.com, Inc. “In addition to providing us with a proprietary platform, we will now own three of the top 10 URL’s in the Google algorithmic search listings for the term ‘tax extension,’ which is among the highest converting of all tax-related terms. This additional organic traffic, together with the traffic we generate through IRS.com, should generate meaningful revenue in the upcoming 2011 tax season.”
The Company also secured $600,000 in financing through a sale/leaseback transaction with Domain Capital of Fort Lee, N.J., and an additional $100,000 in debt from the Company’s CEO. “We are very pleased that we were able to secure additional working capital as well as the funds necessary to complete this acquisition,” continued Mr. O’Donnell. “This is a critical step in our evolution towards a more sustainable model in online personal finance and my investment in the Company to help facilitate our acquisition of FileLater is indicative of my personal commitment to achieving that goal. In addition, the sale/leaseback transaction has allowed us to monetize an intangible asset on our balance sheet while we continue to enjoy the upside value of those assets and all without the need to dilute our current shareholders.”
USA, San Francisco, CA
Wolters Kluwer Health, a provider of information and business intelligence for professionals, students and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health and pharmacy, has completed the acquisition of Pharmacy OneSource, a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider in the hospital pharmacy market. The agreement to acquire Pharmacy OneSource was announced on November 29, 2010. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
This acquisition extends Wolters Kluwer Health’s Clinical Decision Support (CDS) solutions into the hospital pharmacy market and fits squarely into the company’s strategy to expand its business into high growth markets, particularly the fast-growing point-of-care market.
“The acquisition of Pharmacy OneSource will further drive our growth in the point-of-care market, which includes the critical area of the hospital pharmacy,” said Arvind Subramanian, President & CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions. “Our combined product offerings will give us an excellent portfolio of healthcare information and clinical decision tools for the pharmacy, where there is a strong need for resources and tools to drive compliance, greater patient safety and cost reductions.”
USA, Philadelphia, PA
Related articles:
Yesterday a leaked a slide from an internal Yahoo slide show suggested that Yahoo! is closing or merging Del.icio.us, Upcoming, Fire Eagle, MyBlogLog, and more.
Yahoo have now announced that they are thinking of selling Delicious.
The full announcement is below:
What’s Next for Delicious?
Many of you have read the news stories about Delicious that began appearing yesterday. We’re genuinely sorry to have these stories appear with so little context for our loyal users. While we can’t answer each of your questions individually, we wanted to address what we can at this stage and we promise to keep you posted as future plans get finalized.
Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?
– No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.
What is Yahoo! going to do with Delicious?
– We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.
What if I want to get my bookmarks out of Delicious right away?
– As noted above, there’s no reason to panic. We are maintaining Delicious and encourage you to keep using it. That said, we have export options if you so choose. Additionally, many services provide the ability to import Delicious links and tags.
We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you. Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press. We’ll let you know more as things develop.
USA, Sunnyvale, CA
Related articles:
Tribune Media Services (TMS), a provider of entertainment information databases, has acquired video search platform CastTV.
The acquisition will enhance TMS’ entertainment metadata, widely used by 4,000 media and technology companies in 40 countries. TMS customers will now have access to all the metadata necessary to create entertainment-discovery guides that direct consumers to programs available on linear, on-demand and online video platforms.
CastTV has developed search technology that aggregates, indexes and presents data on millions of TV shows, movies, music videos, news and sports clips, and viral videos from more than 1,000 web-video sources.
The CastTV technology automatically matches online video to professionally edited, structured databases such as TMS’ TV, movie and celebrity data, allowing for deep integration with existing TMS products. The CastTV system also allows for “device-aware” content-discovery products that can be limited or expanded to include only access to videos that address a customer’s device limitations or the business needs of a video provider.
The acquisition includes all of CastTV’s technology, products, intellectual property and staff, including CEO Edwin Ong and president Alex Vikati, who founded the San Francisco-based company together in 2006.
“We are thrilled to bring the best-in-class innovations that our talented team has developed to industry leader TMS,” said Ong. “By combining our technology with TMS’ industry-leading entertainment data, we can offer media and technology customers comprehensive, ‘one stop watching’ solutions for today’s connected consumers,” added Vikati.
Combining CastTV’s capabilities with TMS’ deep databases of TV shows, movies and celebrities, will give media and technology companies a one-stop solution for guiding consumers through the rapidly growing array of video platforms. TMS will link the CastTV index of online programs to TMS metadata to enable customers to easily direct consumers to programs regardless of where they are offered.
CastTV also operates a consumer website (www.CastTV.com), which provides more than four million consumers with a comprehensive resource to find what video they want to watch online. TMS will operate the CastTV.com site as part of its Zap2it.com entertainment network, which currently reaches eight million Web visitors and four million mobile app users monthly. TMS will offer advertising packages that combine the entertainment-hungry audiences of both sites.
“With over 50 million Americans watching shows online each week, online video consumption is now mainstream,” said Jay Fehnel, Chief Operating Officer for TMS Entertainment Products. “Most consumers have a hard time finding all the online content they would enjoy — and have no way to see all their viewing options in one place. By adding CastTV’s expertise, TMS will be able to help our clients deliver one guide to all the video a consumer can view, regardless of where the program comes from and what device they are using to view it.”
“The addition of CastTV provides TMS customers fully integrated capabilities that are essential to building professional, reliable and structured video-discovery experiences. It also gives TMS significant additional data-management and technology expertise that is uniquely valuable across our increasingly complex metadata business,” added John Zelenka, Senior Vice President of Business Development for TMS.
USA, San Francisco, CA
US mobile music and content company Livewire Mobile, has acquired FoneStarz Media Group, a UK based mobile digital storefront and mobile content supplier.
The combination of the two companies provides a broad content-offering that includes application distribution, ringback, full-track music, video, advertising, ringtones, images and games. Furthermore, the acquisition expands Livewire Mobile’s market reach to more than 400 million subscribers at over 40 mobile operators in nearly 30 countries, providing one of the most comprehensive one-stop digital content solutions for carriers, handset manufacturers and other media companies entering the mobile content market.
Based in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, FoneStarz has a successful track record of retailing mobile entertainment content for mobile network operators. It manages cutting edge digital content services, from its proprietary merchandising and delivery platform for 11 mobile operators in eight countries around the world.
FoneStarz services are currently deployed with premier operators including Vodafone, Hutchison 3 and O2 in countries including the U.K., Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, New Zealand, South Africa and Egypt. It works with a number of other Tier 1 and 2 operators and has content aggregation agreements with handset manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG, and content licenses with more than 140 media companies, including Disney, Playboy, Turner, American Greetings and Manchester United.
Livewire Mobile plans to incorporate the FoneStarz platform into its InfuseTM integrated storefront solution for mobile operators, as well as its recently launched MediadromeTM direct-to-consumer music service.
Together, the companies bring extensive global experience and market-leading technical infrastructures, providing a platform for rapid strategic growth in new and existing territories and positioning them alongside firms such as Motricity, RealNetworks and Zed in the fast-growing mobile content market. The management team is headed up by Matthew Stecker, CEO, Livewire Mobile and Dave Moreau, CEO and founder of FoneStarz, who will become COO of the combined company. They intend to grow the combined business by exploiting its product set and extending services across six continents.
“As we stated earlier this year, we refocused our company resources toward providing our global partners and customers with an innovative suite of products and end-to-end services,” said Mr. Stecker. “Now, with this combination of two complementary companies, we are creating an even stronger organization with a broadened product suite, improved service and support worldwide and increased cross-selling opportunities to an expanded customer base.”
Mr. Moreau added: “We spent some time looking for a partner that offered a strategic fit in terms of product roadmap and territorial expansion. Scale is vital in this fast moving, global market and we believe Livewire Mobile and FoneStarz together will be able to provide a preeminent digital solution for mobile network operators, handset manufacturers and media businesses.”
USA, Littleton, MA & UK, Cambridgeshire
It has been a complicated journey (see previous Fusion DigiNet stories listed below), but on December 16, 2010, Internet Brands’ stockholders approved the going-private transaction at a special meeting of stockholders. Pursuant to the definitive merger agreement among Internet Brands, Micro Acquisition Corp. and Micro Holding Corp., dated as of September 17, 2010, Internet Brands stockholders will receive $13.35 per share in cash, without interest and less any applicable withholding taxes, for each share of common stock they owned immediately prior to the effective time of the merger (other than shares owned by Micro Holding Corp., Micro Acquisition Corp., Internet Brands and their subsidiaries, and by stockholders who have perfected and not withdrawn a demand for appraisal rights). Internet Brands’ Class A common stock will cease trading on The NASDAQ Global Select Market at the close of market today and will be delisted.
Investing alongside lead investor Hellman & Friedman is JMI Equity, a private equity firm focused on the Internet, software and business services industries.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP served as counsel to Hellman & Friedman. Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP served as counsel to Internet Brands. Jefferies & Company, Inc. acted as exclusive financial advisor and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP acted as legal advisor to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of Internet Brands.
About Internet Brands, Inc.
Internet Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: INET) is a unique and leading Internet media company. The company owns and operates more than 100 websites that are leaders in their vertical markets. In total, these sites organically attract (without paid marketing) approximately 70 million unique visitors per month. The vast majority of these sites have very strong community participation. Internet Brands is unique in its ability to monetize Internet audiences. The company’s proprietary platform optimizes yields from its more than 40,000 direct advertisers spanning seven vertical categories. The platform is core to the company’s acquisitions strategy, providing a cost-efficient and scalable approach to expanding the company’s online footprint. Internet Brands was founded in 1998 by Idealab, a creator and operator of technology companies based in Pasadena, California.
USA, Pasadena, CA
Related articles:
Fusion Corporate Partners 
You must be logged in to post a comment.