Today, international investment firm Digi-Capital published its in-depth review of the global gaming space, giving us a sense of the size, breadth, and activity of the international gaming market in both a year-end retrospective of 2012 as well as what we can expect from the industry in the coming year.
For starters, Digi-Capital found that gaming M&A “beat all records” in 2012, with $4… → Read More
Editor’s note: Jason M. Lemkin served as CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular e-signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. in 2011.
If you are in a reasonably hot and/or interesting space, and you have a modicum of traction or even perceived traction after X months or X years (likely years in SaaS), you’ll probably have a day when you… → Read More
According to Reuters, Google is making major moves in its mergers and acquisitions group, replacing David Lawee with Don Harrison, a high-ranking lawyer at the company. Here’s what Reuters shared about the move; we have reached out to Google for comment: Google Inc is replacing the head of its in-house mergers and acquisitions group with one of its top lawyers and is planning to create a new… → Read More
The very surprising announcement this morning that Facebook is acquiring Instagram for $1 billion says a lot about the state of the web startup ecosystem and the tech world at large — and no doubt, a large part of the industry (and the blogs that breathlessly cover it) will be analyzing what it all means for a while. But for a big part of the financial sector, the deal signals one thing: Facebook… → Read More
Airbnb has acquired Crashpadder, a London-based company that runs an online marketplace where people can list their homes and apartments to be rented out for short stays (essentially, it was like a smaller Airbnb.) Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed.
Visitors to Crashpadder’s website are automatically directed to a landing page about the Airbnb deal, which will affect… → Read More
Apple finally confirmed earlier reports that it bought Israeli semiconductor startup Anobit Technologies. Apple did not confirm the price, which is believed to be between $400 million and $500 million.
Apple bought Anobit for two reasons: its flash memory controllers are a key component of all Apple’s leading products (from iPads and iPhones to MacBook Airs), and in one fell swoop it just added… → Read More
While some M&A deals turn out to be great successes, it’s no surprise that a lot of mergers and acquisitions fail. The obvious factors explaining the failures include culture clashes or founders leaving – taking the DNA with them in the process.
But M&A is more art than science, and the reasons why so many deals fail to deliver on their 1+1=3 promise are complex. Here are some: → Read More
The Justice Dept. finally gave the greenlight today to Google’s proposed $400 million acquisition of AdMeld. The deal was announced in June, and the review took almost six months. The government will not impose any major restrictions on the deal, which is now free to close in the next few days. → Read More
In today’s VC market, it’s age before beauty. This is according to a new study released today by Shareholder Representative Services (SRS), the company that represents shareholder interests during the post-closing process in mergers and acquisitions deals. In other words, SRS is an independent advocate for shareholders that offers communications, accounting, and dispute resolution services to an… → Read More
Back in November 2006, I published the Top 10 Greatest Internet Digital Media M&A Deals of All Time. It included eBay’s $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal, Yahoo’s $1.6 billion acquisition of Overture, and Microsoft’s $400 million purchase of Hotmail back in 1998. It also included News Corp’s $580 million acquisition of MySpace. Don’t laugh. The list was published a month after the… → Read More
A new report put out today by PricewaterhouseCoopers lays out the tech M&A landscape. Technology deals totaled $26 billion in the second quarter of 2011, slightly down from the $26.6 billion worth of deals in the first quarter, but up 6.7 percent from the same quarter a year ago. These numbers include only deals closed in the quarter like Qualcomm’s $3.5 billion acquisition of Atheros… → Read More
Around 2006 there was a sudden increase in so-called “partial liquidations,” where entrepreneurs could take some money off the table during a mid-stage funding round. Considered unheard of at the time, now they’re the norm for companies doing well.
Then in 2009, we saw the rise of secondary markets, which allowed early stage investors and employees to take some money off the table at more… → Read More
With the year—and decade—coming to a close, the business press has been awash with stories about just how lousy the ‘00s were. As Paul Krugman details in the New York Times, it was a decade with a tiny amount of job creation, and the first decade on record where private-sector jobs shrunk. The typical family got no economic boost at all. And when the volatility rollercoaster ended there was… → Read More
The value of venture-backed exits (which is almost entirely M&A these days) might be down about 50 percent in the third quarter, but total M&A activity (including public companies) is seeing a noticeable uptick.
We ran some numbers on Crunchbase, which keeps track of all announced acquisitions, and in the third quarter $31.8 billion worth of acquisitions were announced, double the amount… → Read More
Whether it’s a sign of economic recovery or just investment bankers getting ready to take off the month of August, there’s been a lot acquisition activity lately. In the last week alone, IBM purchased SPSS for $1.2 billion, Amazon bought Zappos for $928 million, Sprint paid $483 million for Virgin Mobile, AdKnowledge paid $50 million for Super Rewards, and Yahoo picked up Xoopit for $20 million… → Read More
Consolidation is the Japanese answer to the current economic crisis, especially in the technology sector. The Nikkei, basically Nippon’s Wall Street Journal, today reports that electronics giant NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology are currently negotiating a merger with the aim of closing talks by the end of this month. The result would be a real heavyweight: The biggest chip maker in Japan and… → Read More
Yet more evidence that the future of media is digital (in case there are still any doubters out there). In a report released this morning, boutique investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group estimates that between 88 percent of the publishing and advertising industry’s revenue growth over the next few years will come from four sectors: Database & Information, B2B Online Media, Consumer Online… → Read More
Japanese electronics giant Sanyo has been in troubled waters for quite some time now so that the rumors that came up in the last days about the company taken over by Panasonic weren’t too surprising. But the speed of the transaction can surely be called unusual. Japan’s biggest news daily The Nikkei is reporting today Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo and his Sanyo counterpart… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
