[London, ENGLAND] QXL.com early
this week completed its acquisition of a majority interest in
Scandinavian online auction service Bidlet AB.
QXL.com now has 50.4 per cent of Bidlet and expects its
public offer for the remaining shares and warrants to be
completed by August 2000.
The acquisition greatly strengthens QXL.com’s position in
Scandinavia, combining its existing online auction sites
in Norway and Denmark with Bidlet’s sites in Sweden and
Finland.
Jim Rose, chief executive of QXL.com, said the deal
was a basis for accelerated growth in Sweden, Denmark,
Norway and Finland, where Internet usage is amongst the
highest levels in Europe.
“Scandinavia is technologically ahead of the rest of Europe
in a number of areas, such as mobile telecommunications,
and this acquisition will enable QXL to roll out enhanced
services to our customers across Europe, including two-way
SMS bidding and WAP,” said Rose.
The match between Bidlet and QXL.com is highly complementary,
as Bidlet’s online auction operations are largely business-to-consumer
while those at QXL.com are mainly consumer-to-consumer.
QXL.com has appointed Patrick von Schenk to be chief executive
of QXL Scandinavia.
QXL.com first announced its proposed acquisition of Bidlet
AB in a share-for-share exchange in March 2000, and
shareholder approval was given at the end of June. Between
these dates, QXL.com also announced a proposed acquisition
of ricardo.de AG, another prominent European online auction
house, to be completed at the end of August.
