Bobshop.nl sold?

It seems that pure online player Bobshop.nl is bought by brick and mortar company Scheer & Foppen (55 offline shops). The website of Scheer & Foppen certainly does not indicate that they have taken Internet very serious. Let’s hope that with this take-over they will enter a new phase in their Internet aspirations.

Congratulations to Bob and his team!

UPDATE: the news has been confirmed by Emerce

Kelkoo sold by Yahoo!

Yahoo has been rumored to be selling Paris-based comparative shopping site Kelkoo for some time now, and it appears that they have found a buyer. Yahoo acquired Kelkoo in 2004 for €475 million.

The company has been sold to a UK-based private equity firm called Jamplant Ltd (update: here is a profile of the fund) for something less than €100 million, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.

Ex-Kelkoo CEO Pierre Chappaz announced the news on his blog (in french), and a copy of the internal email announcing the acquisition is below.

The company has lost much of its momentum since the Yahoo acquisition in the face of significant competition.

Ciao! sold to private investment firm

Greenfield Online, Inc. (Nasdaq: SRVY) has announced that it has entered into a merger agreement to be acquired by an entity affiliated with Quadrangle Group LLC, a private investment firm focused on the media and communications industries. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Quadrangle will acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Greenfield Online, Inc. for $15.50 per share in cash, or a total equity value of approximately $426 million. The purchase price represents a premium of approximately 17% over the Company’s closing share price of $13.28 on June 13, 2008 and a premium of approximately 26% over the average closing share price during the prior 30 days.

The Board of Directors of Greenfield Online has unanimously approved the merger and recommends to stockholders that they vote in favor of the merger. Albert Angrisani, Greenfield Online’s President and Chief Executive Officer said: “Clearly Quadrangle values Greenfield Online’s two growing and profitable businesses, Comparison Shopping and Internet Survey Solutions, along with their global leadership position, satisfied clients and talented employees. We expect the transition will be positive for our business, our customers and employees, and we look forward to leveraging Quadrangle’s expertise in the media, communication and information industries.”

Gordon Holmes, Managing Principal of Quadrangle said:

“Having followed Greenfield Online closely over an extended period, we became increasingly impressed with its international leadership position in online comparison shopping and survey research, as well as its record of strong growth. Using our New York and London offices and our new office in Silicon Valley led by Dan Rosensweig, we were able to fully analyze and appreciate the strength of Greenfield’s global platform, and determine that it represents an attractive investment opportunity for Quadrangle, consistent with our ongoing focus on the media and communications industry.”

Dan Rosensweig, Operating Principal of Quadrangle said:

“Greenfield Online’s internet-based business differentiates itself with a strategic position based on developing strong communities and offering valuable review and survey content. I am confident that with Quadrangle’s extensive experience in online businesses, we will be able to help the company to expand its activities and continue to achieve significant growth.”

Dooyoo sold to LeGuide.com

Finally Dooyoo has been acquired by another CSE. It was no secret that Dooyoo was for sale for around EUR 10 to 15 million euro. For now no details about the deal will be disclosed, but it is expected to be a bit lower than the numbers above. What LeGuide.com will do with the Dooyoo brand remains unsure, but considering the large amounts of money that were put into the Dooyoo brand it is a safe bet to say that they will leave it untouched. Most likely scenario will be that LeGuide.com will rebrand their current (unsuccesful) brand Antag into Dooyoo. LeGuide.com also has a ‘shop directory’ in a number of European countries.

For more info, read on at LifePR

Atomico to invest 300 million in Europe

Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have a big appetite for success. When they sold Skype to eBay they cashed several hundred millions, but they invested quite a substantial part in their investment vehicle Atomico.

Currently they are planning to open a new fund, but now entitely focused on European startups. The fund will have a size of 300 million euros. Atomico’s first fund consists of a lot of well-known names like LastFM, Powerreviews, Technorati, Joost and Wunderloop. Of these, LastFM was recently sold to CBS for around 280 million dollars. It seems that everything Niklas and Janus touch turns into gold. They also were involved in the file sharing program Kazaa. So, if you are a startup and need funding to make the next step I would go for Atomico. Hopefully they will like your business too

High activity in The Netherlands

It’s difficult to keep track of all merger and acquisition activity in The Netherlands. There is no common underlying trigger for the frenzy. For some it has to do with (re)focussing on their core activity, others just want to expand and others are acquired by even larger retailers. Below a short summary of all recent activity:

- The Phone House takes over Typhone, Femmefone en ICTango
- Venture Capitalist Ende & Deitmers buys 30% of Centralpoint
- Takeitnow has been bought by Aces Direct
- First Europa is up for sale
- Venture Capitalist Ende & Deitmers invests in Hyves

I will keep you all updated on any new acitivity!

TakeitNow sold to Aces Direct

TakeitNow, one of the older webshops in The Netherlands, has been sold for several million euro to Aces Direct. The webshop has been up for sale for over a year as the current owner of TakeitNow (iMerge) did not see it as its core business anymore. Imerge can now fully focus their attention on internationalizing Icecat. Icecat offers an open catalogue for product information. The product data is used by shops and price comparison engines.

Microsoft acquires Farecast?

Rumors are that Microsoft has acquired Farecast for approximately $115 million. Insiders say that Farecast had multiple offers to choose from. It is unclear what Microsoft wants to do with Farecast, currently the two companies already work together on MSN Travel.

What does Farecast actually do?

Farecast offers a unique service by providing its users with intelligent airfare predictions. Founded in 2003, Farecast has since gained very healthy funding from several venture funds totaling $20.6 million. Unlike other travel companies, Farecast predicts when a user should buy a ticket based upon 175 billion points of previous airfare data. Its engine can currently predict whether airfare goes up or down up to a week into the future with a claimed success rate of 70-75%. While Farecast has a lot of competition, they claim it is the only company which can predict future prices.
The site has recently expanded to providing the best deals on hotel room as well. Results from travel search sites like ReserveTravel, Orbitz, and CheapTicket, are shown on a map with prices and other hotel information. Farecase gives deal finders an idea if a specific hotel is overpriced or a good deal by marking overpriced hotels blue and attractively-priced hotels red.

Seattle based Farecast now also says to provide predictions in Europe. I have tried to find some predictions, but I couldn’t get it to work for European destination.

Below is a graph of a trip from Las Vegas to San Fransisco:

Take-over wrap-up

Today Checkit, a Dutch searchengine marketing company, has been taken over by Isobar (a Aegis Media company).

Also announced today is the take-over of Indextools by Yahoo. The acquisition includes IndexTools’ Web analytics business and technology as well as its Tensa R&D Kft. subsidiary. Upon completion of the acquisition, the addition of the IndexTools’ assets is intended to expand Yahoo!’s powerful set of services designed to maximize its clients’ online marketing efforts. Read the whole press release here.

Next Web Conference 2008

I will be attending the Next Web Conference 2008 in Amsterdam next friday. I will try to give you an impression of this conference afterwards. I also hope to run into some interesting people

See you there!