eBay Buys Two Danish Classifieds Sites For $390 Million; Announces Bill Me Later Purchase, Layoffs
As part of its goal to increase its online classifieds holdings, eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) has turned to Denmark to buy Den Bla Avis and BilBasen for $390 million (about 2.1 billion Danish Kroner). The prices for the two weren’t broken out individually. eBay, which has a minority stake in Craigslist—the two are currently in the midst of a wide-ranging legal battle—has indicated that it wants to expand its focus on the online classifieds business. Den Bla Avis and BilBasen is added to eBay’s global portfolio of such sites, including the Netherlands’ Marktplaats, Spain’s LoQUo, the U.K.‘s Gumtree, Germany’s mobile.de and Kijiji, which is stronger in Europe, but has been working on building up its U.S. presence lately as a competitor to Craigslist. eBay boasts that this latest acquisition gives it an online classifieds business a stake in more than 20 countries and 1,000 cities. As eBay hinted at its plans to buy more online classifieds last month, rumors began circulating that it planned to cut about 10 percent of its 15,000-person workforce, in the face of declining profits and stagnant traffic at its primary online auction site. The company has not commented on the layoff rumors. Release Separately, eBay also said it was buying Bill Me Later, which is a rival online payment site to eBay’s Pay Pal for $945 million and will cut about 1,000 jobs. More details on our sister site, paidContent.org.
Posted In: Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisitions, Countries, Europe, Denmark, Scandinavia, bilbasen, den bla avis, ebay
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Comments (0)
Oct 6, 2008 12:30 PM
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/net-stocks-online-retailers-down/story.aspx?guid={F8294FEC-209E-4976-A17B-92F0DE13ABD0}
I think the downgrade can be changed now as eBay is on their way back to “streamline” operation. This is still a great opportunity for Amazon [big player] and Wigix [new player] to take a slice of the eBay pie as long as eBay brings a bitter taste to people’s mouths.
Oct 7, 2008 8:06 AM
Market is yet to digest this ebay acquisition but EBay already declared that they are going to o Fire 10 Percent of Bill Me Later Workers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/06/AR2008100603035.html
Oct 16, 2008 3:07 AM
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