German media giant Bertelsmann AG will sell its Internet
comparison shopping unit Evenbetter.com to U.S.-based DealTime, also a comparison-shopping
service, and will form a joint venture with DealTime in Europe in a
transaction valued at about $100 million.
As part of the agreement, Bertelsmann will also take a stake in DealTime ‘s
parent company, DealTime Ltd. and will invest in DealTime’s subsidiary,
DealTime Europe, in return for a 49 percent stake in the unit.
DealTime Europe and evenbetter.com both currently operate comparison-shopping
Web sites in Germany and the UK, and plan to launch in France and Italy later this
year.
“What attracted us to DealTime was the broad scope of product categories they
search, their leadership position in the U.S., and their superior scaleable
technology, which is complementary to evenbetter,” said Klaus Eierhoff, chief executive officer
of Bertelsmann Multimedia and board member of Bertelsmann AG.
“Looking at the
e-commerce landscape, we saw DealTime as the overall leader in comparison
shopping and evenbetter as the niche leader within the books, music and
movies categories. We think this combined entity will be best suited to
capitalize on the potential for e-commerce in Europe ”
Evenbetter.com, a majority-owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann, now searches
three major categories — books, movies and music — and received 475,000
unique users in April. DealTime reported 3.8 million unique users in April.
“Marrying DealTime with Bertelsmann’s significant media assets worldwide and
evenbetter’s comparison-shopping expertise in books, music and movies,
enhances our position as the ultimate buyer’s gateway on the Web,” said Dan
Ciporin, president and chief executive officer of DealTime.
Under the new agreement, evenbetter users will be redirected to the
corresponding DealTime sites, offering shoppers access to both DealTime’s and
evenbetter’s combined categories.
DealTime will also now offer its users
evenbetter’s downloadable browser companion, evenbetter Express. The
evenbetter headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany will become the new
headquarters of the joint venture in Europe.