Facing an imminent delisting from the NASDAQ exchange, dispute resolution
site clickNsettle.com Inc. said it will
acquire privately held MPEG-4 technology company E-Vue Inc. in a stock deal valued at about
$20 million.
The transaction would make E-Vue’s MPEG-4 digital media technology a business
arm for clickNsettle .
clickNsettle.com provides a blind bid online negotiation program for dispute
resolution and allows users to submit a case for in-person arbitration or
mediation to its NAM (National Arbitration and Mediation) unit.
Great Neck, NY-based clickNsettle.com is scheduled to meet with stock
exchange officials on July 19. Its stock was up 11 cents in early trading
Friday, to 86 cents a share. Its 52-week high is $4.56; the low, 27 cents.
The company said it believes that its Alternative Dispute Resolution business
will benefit greatly from having access to E-Vue’s technology.
Iselin, NJ-based E-Vue is developing next-generation end-to-end solutions for
secure multimedia delivery over broadband and/or wireless networks based on
the MPEG-4 standard and associated technologies.
The deal involves a combination of common stock and convertible preferred
stock ranging from an aggregate of 10 million to 13 million shares depending
on certain financing conditions on the part of E-Vue.
“As one area of application, E-Vue’s media communication platform can be
integrated with our online dispute resolution system so that we can better
service our clickNsettle.com users,” said Roy Israel, clickNsettle.com’s
chairman and CEO. “We believe the merger will strongly enhance our
shareholder’s value both in the short term and in the long run.”
E-Vue’s Chairman, Charles Xue, will become part of the management team of the
merged company. Kenneth Sun, the current president of E-Vue will become the
president of the combined company.
Founded in 1992 as National Arbitration and Mediation, clickNsettle.com
completed its initial public offering as NAM Corp. in November 1996 and is
the only publicly traded dispute resolution company in the United States.
However, it has lost money every quarter back to 1998, according to
multex.com’s marketguide service.
Dispute resolution has been much in the news this week; just yesterday the
American Arbitration Association, a non-profit conflict management and
dispute resolution provider launched a new Dispute Risk Management Web site for online B2B
participants.
