M&A roundup - week ending 7/9/16

Steven Loeb · July 9, 2016 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/4667

Google bought Moodstocks and Anvato; Avast acquired AVG; Alibaba purchased Wandoujia

Hornet, a gay social network for chatting and dating, acquired Vespa, a gay city guide. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Christof Wittig, Vespa's founder and CEO, has been appointed the new CEO of Hornet, while co-founder Sean Howell is now Chairman and President.

With the acquisition of Vespa, Hornet will be able to integrate gay places and events in 300 cities in 70 countries worldwide into its products.

Google acquired image recognition startup Moodstocks. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Moodstocks will be shutting down its services. The team will be coming to work at Google's R&D Center in Paris, which contributes to the development of YouTube and Chrome.

Founded in 2008, the Paris-based Moodstocks initially focused on on-device image recognition, the company has been working on extending its reach to object recognition for the past two and a half years.

Google also acquired Anvato, a software platform for encoding, editing, publishing and distribution of video content across multiple platforms. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Anvato’s Media Content Platform will complement Google's efforts to enable scalable media processing and workflows in the cloud.

Founded in 2007, Anvato's customers include NBCUniversal, Fox Sports, Telemundo, Bravo, USA Network and Syfy. The company had raised $2.55 million in venture funding.

Avast Software, a provider of security software, entered into a purchase agreement to acquire AVG Technologies, a developer of business, mobile and PC device security software applications. Avast will offer to purchase all of the outstanding ordinary shares of AVG for $25.00 per share in cash, for a total consideration of approximately $1.3 billion.

Avast is pursuing this acquisition to gain scale, technological depth and geographical breadth so that the new organization can be in a position to take advantage of emerging growth opportunities in Internet Security as well as organizational efficiencies.

This transaction has been unanimously approved by the Management Board and Supervisory Board of Avast. The Management Board and Supervisory Board of AVG approved and support the transaction and recommend the offer for acceptance to the AVG shareholders.

Sega acquired PC game developer Amplitude Studios. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Amplitude's titles include Endless Space, Endless Legend, and Dungeon of the Endless. The studio is currently working on a followup to Endless Space, called Endless Space 2, which will be published by Sega.

Sega will also publish Amplitude’s back catalog as well.

Financial services company Klik & Pay acquired payment solution platform Paymill. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Klik & Pay says will continue to operate Paymill’s services alongside its own, for the time being. Mark Henkel, co-founder and CEO of Paymill, will continue to work at the company.

Founded in 2012, Paymill had raised $18 million in venture funding from Blumberg Capital, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Rocket Internet and Sunstone Capital.

European gaming company gamigo acquired highdigit, a provider of marketing solutions for game publishers and developers. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

With this acquisition, the gamigo Group enlarges its platform strategy, as well as growth in the B2B customer portfolio and sales revenues.

Some of gamigo's titles include Kings and Legends, Pirate Galaxy and Fiesta Europe.

Founded in 2012, highdigit' customers include Wingracers of Red Bull, PayPal, and paysafecard.

Gamigo also completed its merger with online game publisher Aeria Games. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The combined company has a portfolio of more than 20 multiplayer and more than 500 casual games. Aeria Games' titles include Dragomon Hunter, Echo of Soul, Aura Kingdom and S4 League.

The ProSiebenSat.1 Group has contributed its 100 percent stake in Aeria Games and SevenGames Network to gamigo AG and is now a minority shareholder of gamigo AG with 33 percent. SevenGames Network GmbH will in future do business under the name of adspree media GmbH.

The merger with Aeria was first announced in May.

Alibaba acquired Android app store Wandoujia. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Wandoujia will become part of Alibaba’s mobile division.

Founded in 2009, Wandoujia had raised $128 million in venture funding from DCM Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Idea Bulb Venture and Softbank.

Learfield Sports, a multimedia rights holder, acquired GoVision, a provider of mobile and modular LED video technology. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The company will continue to operate under the GoVision name and brand, and all current employees will remain with the firm. GoVision Founder and CEO Chris Curtis will report to Learfield COO Marc Jenkins.

Glaucon Capital Partners acted as GoVision’s financial advisor for the transaction.

Lightower Fiber Networks, a provider of custom, high-capacity network services, acquired Datacenter101, a data center provider. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Datacenter101 is strategically located in downtown Columbus at 101 East Tower Street. The facility is engineered for redundancy, reliability, and scalability for small, medium and large businesses within the region.

The new Lightower data center offers approximately 10,000 square feet of data center space, 24/7 access and security, with real-time critical systems monitoring, N+1 power and UPS, and N+1 cooling.

Noosphere Ventures, an international asset management firm, acquired Q&A social network Ask.fm from IAC. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Founded in Latvia, Ask.fm launched in June 2010 and was acquired by Ask.com in August 2014. It has 150 million members in over 150 countries.

IAC is the owner of the dating apps Tinder, PlentyOfFish, Match.com and OkCupid.

Animoca Brands, a global mobile games developer, acquired Finnish mobile game developer TicBits. The price was €2.35 million ($2.60 million) and €1 million ($1.1 million) payable in 2018

TicBits titles include Crazy Kings, Sudoku, Solitaire, and Mahjong. TicBits games have been downloaded 11 million times globally and reported a total of 750,000 monthly active users in March 2016.

Founded in 2010, TicBits has €1.2 million ($1.3 million) in excess cash on its balance sheet.

Telstra, a telecommunications and information services company, acquired Readify, a provider of application development and software-focused consulting and managed services. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Readify's capabilities will provide an additional platform for Telstra to drive digital transformation for its enterprise customers in domestic and global markets.

Founded in 2001, Readify employs around 200 staff across major Australian cities, including 160 software developers. The company had raised $21 million in venture funding.

Integral Ad Science, a media valuation platform, acquired Swarm, a security solution for bots. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Swarm’s technology is complementary to Integrel Ad Science's tech stack, and its detection approach will allow it to expand its capabilities globally.

The Swarm team will be joining the company as part of its Fraud Lab, providing fraud knowledge that will strengthen its research capabilities.

Jaywing, a digital marketing agency, acquired online marketing and digital agency Digital Massive. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The acquisition will allow Jaywind to expand its operations in Australia. The company already has a presence in Australia with Epiphany’s Australian office, Epiphany Digital, and Digital Massive will merge with it immediately, with further brand development over the next few months.

Digital Massive has a number of blue chip, international clients including, Wedgwood, Waterford Crystal, Royal Doulton, the World's largest estate agent Century 21 and Australia's leading flooring specialist Amber.

Convergys, a customer management company, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire customer management servicer provider buw. The price was EUR 123 million in cash ($136 million).

The acquisition adds buw’s geographic footprint, complementary client base, and German language capabilities. In addition, buw will bring 16 sites and approximately 6,000 employees spread across Germany, Hungary and Romania into Convergys’ global operations.

Convergys and buw expect to close the transaction during the third quarter of 2016, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including applicable regulatory requirements.

Mediaocean, a software provider for the advertising world, acquired INVISION, a provider of cross-device sell-side workflow solutions to major media companies. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Founded in 1993, INVISION's clients include DealMaker, DealMaker Digital and ProPost. The company had raised $44.62 million in venture funding.

The transaction closed on June 30, 2016. Stifel advised INVISION in this transaction.

LeadPages, a landing page and lead generation platform, acquired Drip, a marketing automation company. No financial terms were disclosed.

Drip’s CEO Rob Walling and other team members will join Leadpages at the company’s Minneapolis headquarters in July, growing the Leadpages team to over 180. Leadpages will continue to enthusiastically support other email service providers and marketing automation solutions in addition to Drip.

Leaders of both companies say the Drip feature set will allow Leadpages to better serve larger enterprises, support existing customers as they grow, and provide businesses of all sizes with industry-leading campaign management and automation.

FE International Inc advised Drip on the transaction.

(Image source: youarenotsosmart.com)