Reuters quoted four sources with knowledge of the matter and pointed out that negotiations are still ongoing.
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Italian mobile apps developer Bending Spoons, a company that Francesco Patarnello, Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, and Luca Querella founded, is holding talks with Apollo Management portfolio company Yahoo! for a 1.4 billion US Dollars (above 1.1 billion euros) acquisition of Aol (fka America On Line), Reuters said quoting four sources with direct knowledge of the matter and pointing out that negotiations are still ongoing.
On 10 September, Wednesday, Bending Spoons said it reached an agreement for the 1.38 billion US Dollars in-cash take private of Nasdaq-listed video sharing platform Vimeo (see here a previous post by BeBeez)
The 2000 merger of Aol with Time Warner ended with regulatory investigations and devaluations rather than a success. In 2021, Apollo Global Management acquired 90% of Yahoo! from Verizon for 5 billion US Dollars.
Bending Spoons, Apollo and Yahoo did not disclose comment to Reuters, nor they provided details to BeBeez.
The AOL acquisition would be Bending Spoons’ tenth M&A deal since January 2024.
Between 2024 and 2025, the Italian app developer purchased California’s MileIQ Inc. (see here a previous post by BeBeez), German komoot (see here a previous post by BeBeez), Nasdaq-listed Brightcove (see here a previous post by BeBeez), WeTransfer, Issuu, Hopin/StreamYard Top Corp, Meetup, and the digital activities of Mosaic Group.
In 2024, Bending Spoons generated sales of 622 million euros, an adjusted ebitda of 315 million, and a net financial debt of 612 million (see here the last results presentation of TIP, one of the Italian investors in Bending Spoons).
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