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.

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.

QXL shares soar with eBay tipped as secret bidder

eBay may be the mystery bidder behind a possible takeover of its smaller UK rival QXL Ricardo, which yesterday confirmed it had received a bid approach. Shares in QXL Ricardo rose 10.6 per cent to £16.70 after the announcement, giving the online auctioneer a capitalisation of £771 million. That is still less than half its £1.7 billion value at the height of the dot-com boom in 2000, when its shares reached £37.

The FTSE 250-listed business said: “The company notes the recent movement in the company’s share price and confirms that it has received a preliminary approach which may or may not lead to an offer being made for the company.”

It is understood eBay, which generated full-year sales of $6 billion (£2.9 billion) and $1.1 billion in profits, would be interested in QXL Ricardo’s Eastern European business. Of particular interest would be its lucrative Polish division, which, until June last year, was the subject of a three-year legal dispute between management.

Dexcom indeed taking over Coolblue

Interesting stuff always happens while you are away! Just back from an e-commerce congress in Munchen and the news of Dexcom taking over Coolblue (controlling stake) is finally out. I heared rumours about this take-over in the beginning of August, but did not want to affect the negotiations. Read my post of the 22nd of August: large take-over pending in Dutch e-tail sector.

Dexcom Holdings is really becoming a player to take into account. They already have taken over the following re- or etailers:

• t for telecom
• Dixons
• Dynabyte
• and now Coolblue

Well, hope to bring you new take-over news soon again! Just visit my blog regularly!