AOL Pulls Out From TradeDoubler Offer

[engine]

AOL has withdrawn its offer to buy TradeDoubler after failing to get enough of the online marketer's shareholders to approve the acquisition.

In mid-January, the Time Warner subsidiary announced that it offered $900 million for the Swedish provider of online marketing sales and services. The combination would complement AOL's existing European online advertising effort, which is built upon an earlier acquisition of Advertising.com, and allow it to offer advertisers a wider range of services, AOL said.

At the time of the announcement, AOL had garnered the approval of 20 percent of TradeDoubler's shares. In addition, TradeDoubler's board recommended the offer...

...But on Wednesday, AOL said it had received acceptances from the owners of only "a limited number of shares" and since it was clear that it wouldn't reach the 90 percent threshold it set as a contingency of the deal, the company decided to withdraw the offer.

AOL Pulls Out From TradeDoubler Offer [infoworld.com]

Initial reports of the sale, reported earlier [webmasterworld.com...]

[ronin]

Thank goodness for that. How much of a conflict of interest would be there be in a content-network the size of AOL owning a leading AM network? What would stop AOL from going into competition with all of TD's publishers?

[iblaine]

Sucks for trade doubler...that's a huge premium price. Valueclick stock dropped a little today.