Australia's 2WEB M+A Boom

krista allen
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

Fairfax, one of the media companies driving M+A change in Aust/NZ has a nice summary of local 2.0 M+A, which will no doubt attract those who are "Built to Flop" as the Ajax saying goes. Half the sales are Australian based services, not global Australian services interestingly, and the acquisition averages (alot in the $12-$15m range which equates to $10m US) are while 2-3 times smaller than US acquisitions ($25-30M) ala flickr, delicious, do not reflect the 20times' est difference in internet audience size. This shows the premium Australian media companies and telcos will pay for market leading, focused, independent web-services in Australia. All makes sense to me :) The Aussie acquisitions are highlighted in red.

Let's make a deal Digital sales in the past year

1. Bookmarks: del.icio.us sold to Yahoo for $41 million
2. Photosharing: Flickr to Yahoo for $54 million
3. Local search: Australian Local Search to News Limited for an estimated $15 million
4 Entertainment listings: HWW to ninemsn for $14 million
5 Relationships: RSVP to Fairfax for $39 million
6. Social Networking: Myspace to Rupert Murdoch' s News Corp for $770 million
7. Holiday bookings: Stayz to Fairfax for $12.7 million
8. Blogs: Weblogs, Inc blog network to US internet giant AOL for around $33 million
9. Auctions: Trade Me to Fairfax for $675 million
10. Content: Google buys 5% of AOL for $1.35 billion