By Elvira Pollina<\/p>\n
MILAN (Reuters) -Italian tech company Bending Spoons said on Wednesday it will acquire AOL from Yahoo, which is backed by Apollo Global Management, adding a storied internet brand to its growing portfolio of digital businesses.<\/p>\n
Bending Spoons said it secured a $2.8 billion debt financing package to support the acquisition, as well as investments in research and development and future M&A activity.<\/p>\n
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.<\/p>\n
Sources familiar with the matter had told Reuters that Yahoo was nearing the sale of AOL to Bending Spoons for $1.4 billion when it reported on the likely transaction on October 1.<\/p>\n
NEW CHAPTER FOR AOL<\/p>\n
“AOL is an important and beloved business with a brand that has stood the test of time,” Bending Spoons said in a statement to Reuters.<\/p>\n
“It has strong fundamentals \u2014 high subscriber retention and, with around 30 million monthly and 8 million daily active users, excellent engagement,” it said, adding that AOL ranks among the top 10 most used email apps globally.<\/p>\n
Milan-based Bending Spoons has emerged as one of Europe’s most prominent technology firms, with a strategy of purchasing struggling tech companies and revamping them.<\/p>\n
The deal marks a fresh chapter for AOL, the one-time giant of the internet age, known for its email service and “You’ve Got Mail” notification.<\/p>\n
AOL was at the centre of the biggest merger in history at the time when it combined with Time Warner in 2000 but the mega-deal resulted in regulatory probes and writedowns.<\/p>\n
SERIES OF ACQUISITIONS<\/p>\n
The announcement of the AOL deal comes one month after Bending Spoons entered a definitive agreement to acquire video platform Vimeo.<\/p>\n
The latest financing package was provided by a consortium of leading banks including Banco BPM, BNP Paribas, CACIB Cr\u00e9dit Agricole, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho, Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale, UniCredit, and Wells Fargo.<\/p>\n
The round brings Bending Spoons’ total debt funding in 2025 to around $4 billion, the company said.<\/p>\n
Bending Spoons, whose products count 300 million monthly users, has made a series of acquisitions recently, including file-sharing service WeTransfer, note-taking tool Evernote and photo editor Remini.<\/p>\n
Bankers see the firm as a candidate for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Elvira PollinaEditing by Keith Weir)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Elvira Pollina MILAN (Reuters) -Italian tech company Bending Spoons said on Wednesday it will acquire AOL from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[52494,81622,139954,28,97805,6383],"class_list":["post-259075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aol","tag-apollo-global-management","tag-bending-spoons","tag-business","tag-debt-financing","tag-yahoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}