IAC acquires Tutor.com

January 7, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

IACIAC has acquired Tutor.com, an online tutoring solution. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 1998, Tutor.com connects students anytime, anywhere with more than 2,500 screened and qualified tutors for immediate one-to-one sessions. Historically focused on core K-12 subjects, Tutor.com has more recently expanded into AP courses, test prep, college-level curriculum, and real-time writing help.

“Tutor.com has done the hard part, having built over many years an incredible nationwide network of high quality tutors ready to help tutorstudents improve their learning,” said Greg Blatt , CEO of IAC. “We think it’s ripe for us to accelerate usage by bringing to bear our consumer Internet expertise in areas like product, marketing and distribution. It’s not often we find a company with such untapped potential that our particular skill set can help unlock, in an area that truly helps people improve their lives, all at a compelling valuation. Although it’s small, we’re excited about the acquisition.”

George Cigale will remain CEO and continue to run the business from Tutor.com’s offices in New York City.

USA, New York, NY

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Wolters Kluwer Health completes the acquisition of Health Language, Inc.

January 7, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

WaltersKluwerHealthWolters 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 Health Language, Inc., a leader in the fast-growing Medical Terminology Management (MTM) market. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This acquisition of Health Language is a fit with our strategy to continually expand our market-leading point-of-care solutions portfolioHealthLanguage that helps customers around the globe realise the advantages of healthcare information technologies – within their business operations and at the point of care with patients,” said Arvind Subramanian , President & CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions. “Health Language is a recognized leader in the MTM field and the right expert to provide our customers with new levels of system interoperability to meet current and future healthcare information sharing needs.”

Health Language’s medical content terminology databases and software solutions enable hospitals, electronic medical record system providers (EMRs) and payers around the globe to manage, update and map disparate medical vocabularies and administrative codes used in U.S. and international settings. The company’s databases and software products include more than 180 standard terminologies and proprietary content sets to enable easier information sharing across many healthcare information technology systems.

The company also provides clinical content and professional services to enable interoperability, web-based terminology mapping, Meaningful Use compliance and ICD-10 conversion, a system of coding created by the World Health Organization that is in various phases of implementation worldwide. Health Language is headquartered in Denver, Colorado and has approximately 85 employees.

USA, Minneapolis, MN

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Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC acquires Californian conference business TTI/Vanguard

January 7, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

Euromoney logoEuromoney Institutional Investor PLC, the international online information and events group, is expanding its membership events portfolio with the acquisition of TTI/Vanguard, which is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.

Euromoney paid US$8 million to acquire 87% of the equity of TTI/Vanguard. The acquisition is expected to be earnings enhancing in itsTT! Vanguard first year.  The remaining equity will be acquired in two stages of an earn-out by December 2014.

TTI/Vanguard is a private membership organisation for executives who lead technology innovation in global organisations across the public, private and academic sectors. Enterprises subscribe to TTI/Vanguard’s conference series to explore how emerging and potentially disruptive technologies may affect their organisations, policy and society. Each of TTI/Vanguard’s five annual conferences is part classroom, part think-tank and part laboratory. At the core of TTI/Vanguard is its world-class Advisory Board of visionaries and futurists who inspire and develop TTI/Vanguard’s content direction (see footnote below).

Under its Institutional Investor brand, Euromoney runs a Financial Technology Forum in the United States and has a strong record of running and successfully building subscription memberships in asset management in the US, Europe and Asia. It now expects to apply this expertise to grow TTI/Vanguard’s business globally.

Dr. Len Kleinrock, past chairman, will remain a minority shareholder in the business and will be actively involved in TTI/Vanguard until at least December 2014.

“The acquisition of TTI/Vanguard is consistent with our strategy of applying our expertise to global sectors,” said Richard Ensor, Chairman of Euromoney. “This takes us into the high-technology content sector. Euromoney has a successful record of acquiring events businesses and accelerating their growth globally, as demonstrated over the past 15 years by the success of Institutional Investor which now has 13 subscription memberships around the world. We look forward to doing the same with TTI/Vanguard.”

Dr Kleinrock said: “Having successfully built TTI/Vanguard into a must-attend membership for heads of innovation and technology across a multitude of diverse industries from government to retail, finance to pharmaceuticals, I believe that Euromoney is ideally positioned to expand the TTI/Vanguard network and membership worldwide. We are confident that Euromoney’s portfolio and expertise will add tremendous value to what we have been consistently providing our members for more than 20 years. We look forward to sharing our know-how and experience and continuing to build a world-wide TTI/Vanguard community.”

UK, London & USA, Santa Monica, CA

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UPDATE: Permira acquires Ancestry.com for $1.6 billion

January 5, 2013 — askhabra

215_largeEuropean private equity firm Permira has completed its acquisition of Ancestry.com for $1.6bn or $32 per share in cash. The price is a 40 percent premium from the price when word of the company being offered for sale surfaced in June and includes vesting of any outstanding options. As a result of the deal, Ancestry.com will carry  ”just under $1 billion” in debt. This comes news comes 2 weeks after reports that Ancestry.com would not be able to proceed with the sale unless it disclosed more information about the deal before a shareholder vote on December 27 2012 (Source).

Ancestry.com officials were required to change revenue projections and publicly disclose that provisions of the deal barred other bidders from attempting to top Permira’s offer, said Delaware Chancery Court Judge Leo Strine. The vote took place as scheduled with the sale approved by shareholders owning approximately 75% of Ancestry.com common stock. Permira has since acquired all outstanding shares of Ancestry.com and its stock ceased trading on the NASDAQ on December 28th 2012.

Genealogy website Ancestry.com is the world’s largest online family history resource has more than two million subscribers who pay at least $12.95 a month for its content and online tools. More than 11 billion records have been added to the site in the past 16 years. Ancestry users have created more than 41 million family trees containing approximately 4 billion profiles. The press release for the transaction states that “There are no anticipated changes in the Ancestry.com operations.”

The buyout group includes the private-equity firm’s co-investors; members of Ancestry.com’s management, including Chief Executive Tim Sullivan and Chief Financial Officer Howard Hochhauser; and Spectrum Equity, which owns about 30 percent of Ancestry.com.

View original article.

USA, Utah & UK, London

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Mood Media Announces Acquisition of Technomedia Solutions

January 5, 2013 — askhabra

moodmedia-purpleMood Media Corporation has acquired the assets of Technomedia Solutions and its sister company GoConvergence for approximately $23 million in cash. In addition to the $23 million purchase price is a contingent consideration payable in 2014 dependant on the profitable growth of operations.

Technomedia Solutions and GoConvergence create and deliver media and technology for a range of projects including displays, kiosks and interactive content for multiple industries such as retail, hospitality, theme parks, performing arts, museums, special venue, education among others. The firm, formed in 2001, operates a turn-key model and has clients including Abercrombie & Fitch, Hard Rock Café International, Cirque du Soleil, Wanda Group as well as other global entertainment and education clients.  In 2012, Technomedia is expected to generate annual revenues of US$43 million and EBITDA of US$5.7 million.

“The transaction will be immediately accretive to Mood Media’s shareholders while accelerating the growth profile and competitive positioning of the combined businesses. We are excited about the opportunity ahead and look forward to utilising our combined strengths to build on what Technomedia has established in concert with Mood’s initiatives to help our customers achieve their goals,” stated Lorne Abony , Chairman and CEO of Mood Media.

CA, Concord, ON & USA, Orlando, FL

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Dyn acquires website monitoring startup Verelo

January 4, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

dynDyn, a Internet Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) business, has acquired Verelo, a Toronto-based startup that provides uptime and performance analytics, as well as malware detection and site health monitoring services.

Dyn does not intend on selling the Verelo services long term and instead will offer its performance-orientated tools as a free service to their customers and as a sales tool for prospects.

Verelo, founded in early 2012 by Andrew McGrath and Michael Curry, made its official public launch in June after graduating from Toronto’s Extreme Startups incubator program.

Verelo’s monitoring services allows customers to check their websites from multiple locations around the world. If downtime, database connection errors or other problems are detected, customers are notified by SMS, phone or email.

Dyn CEO Jeremy Hitchcock said, “Our mantra is ‘Uptime is the Bottom Line’ so we are always looking for great opportunities to prevent downtime,” said Hitchcock. “Acquiring Verelo allows us to offer more innovative services to our customers. We don’t want to just fix downtime. We want to prevent it.”

USA, Manchester, NH & Canada, Toronto

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Rumour: Shutterfly to acquire ThisLife

January 4, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

this lifeTechCrunch is reporting a rumour that Shutterfly is to acquire online photo sharing and storage startup ThisLife an online photo storage and sharing service. The price is rumoured to be around $25 million.

This life raised $2.75 million seed funding in June 2012, led by Madrona Venture Group.

USA, Redwood City, CA

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BuzzFeed closes $19.3M series D funding

January 4, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

buzzfeedWeb social publisher BuzzFeed, has completed a Series D financing of $19.3 million led by NEA. Previous investors RRE, Hearst, SoftBank, and Lerer Ventures participated. Michael and Kass Lazerow, serial entrepreneurs and co-founders of Buddy Media, joined the round as new investors.

“We have the senior management, board, and investors we need to build the next great media company: socially native, tech enabled, with massive scale. We are all focused on that big goal and raised this capital to move even faster,” said Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed Founder and CEO.

In December, the company passed 40 million unique monthly visitors (Google Analytics), with growth driven by social (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) and mobile (over one third of all BuzzFeed traffic). The company also grew revenue more than threefold in 2012, exclusively from content-driven, social advertising, and grew staff to 180 employees.

The company will use the capital to further mobile development, expand geographically, grow its editorial team, invest in video, and work on new initiatives that will be announced later in the year.

USA, New York

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Adobe acquires creative social media platform Behance

January 3, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

adobeAdobe Systems Incorporated has acquired privately held Behance, an online social media platform that enables creatives to showcase and share their work.

According to TechCrunch, Adobe paid slightly more than $150 million in cash and stock, with certain growth goals to attain over multiple years.

“When we launched Creative Cloud earlier this year, we committed that we would give members new value on an ongoing basis.  Last week, we launched new training features, file synchronization and sharing capabilities, digital publishing services and significant updates to a number of our tools, including Photoshop,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Adobe. “Behance will play a key role in Adobe’s efforts to serve the creative world in the years to come and will accelerate our efforts to enable a more open and collaborative creative behancecommunity.”

In the last 30 days, portfolios on Behance-powered sites have received over 90 million views and today there are over 3 million projects hosted on the Behance platform.

As well as providing a showcase for creative work across industries and disciplines, Behance also powers the portfolio display for thousands of other websites around the Web, including AdWeek, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and The Smithsonian National Design Awards. As Behance has grown, it has evolved into more than a destination that creatives use to forge connections. Behance has now become a place where creative professionals also find work and market their unique skills.

Adobe plans to integrate Behance’s community and portfolio capabilities with Adobe Creative Cloud, allowing members to seamlessly create content, seek feedback, showcase their work and distribute it across devices.

Further details

USA, San Jose, CA

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Thomson Reuters to acquire Practical Law Company

January 3, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

Thomson Reuters LogoThomson Reuters is to acquire Practical Law Company, the London-based provider of practical legal know-how and workflow tools to law firms and corporate law departments. Practical Law Company has more than 750 employees, with principal operations in London and New York, and will be part of the Legal business of Thomson Reuters. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Telegraph reported senior industry sources speculating that Thomson Reuters is likely to have paid between £200m and £300m given PLC employs 750 people and generated pre-tax profits of £18.1m on revenues of £48.2m in the year ending April 2011.

Practical Law Company, with its wide range of expert-authored, up-to-date practical legal resources and software tools, is seen as a PLCpowerful complement to the Thomson Reuters portfolio of respected legal software and information products including Westlaw, which offers the broadest and most comprehensive collection of primary and analytical content for legal professionals.

Commenting on today’s announcement, James C. Smith, chief executive officer of Thomson Reuters, said, “Practical Law Company will uniquely position Thomson Reuters to deliver a comprehensive suite of compelling productivity solutions that marry world-class legal information, expert know-how resources and software tools to help in-house lawyers and outside counsel respond to client demands to work faster and smarter.”

“The combination of Practical Law Company and Thomson Reuters will create unique capabilities for a legal market segment that has seen significant changes over the past several years,” continued Mr. Smith. “Quality and effectiveness have always been key to successful law firms and corporate legal departments. Efficiency has become equally critical. Together, we’ll provide a full range of resources and tools to help our customers deliver the best advice quickly and efficiently, keep on top of regulatory and market developments, and better control costs.”

Practical Law Company’s unique resources, such as its practice notes, standard documents, checklists and What’s Market tools, reflect the experience and insight of the company’s team of expert attorney editors, many of whom have worked at the world’s leading law firms and corporate legal departments. Their practical know-how covers a wide variety of practice areas in the U.S. and the UK, such as commercial, corporate, employment, intellectual property, finance and litigation, among others.

Robert Dow, Practical Law Company chairman and co-founder, said that this collection of expert know-how, which is updated continuously to reflect changes in law and practice, is highly respected and valued in the legal marketplace. With more than 100,000 lawyers worldwide accessing their materials, Practical Law Company’s subscribers include 96 percent of the top 200 UK law firms and 86 percent of UK FTSE 100 corporate legal departments, as well as 80 percent of the AmLaw 200 firms and more than 700 corporate legal departments in the U.S.

“We share many values with Thomson Reuters, most notably a passion for innovation in the legal marketplace and for providing lawyers with the best possible resources so that they can spend more time adding value to clients and less time reinventing the wheel,” Mr. Dow said. “We also share a commitment to helping our customers evolve to meet changing demands. We are delighted to be joining Thomson Reuters, and firmly believe that together we can create an integrated solution that changes how lawyers practice.”

USA, New York, NY & UK, London

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