The mergers and acquisitions round up

Another Friday means another mergers and acquisitions round up. Catch up on all the moves here: Twitter acquires Periscope  Periscope, a live video streaming startup, was quietly acquired by Twitter for a just under $100 million about a month ago. According to The Wall Street Journal, Periscope is Twitter's most expensive purchase and demonstrate's Twitter's desire to introduce live video streaming capabilities. This comes as no surprise given the popularity of 'live tweeting' amongst Twitter users. Interestingly, Periscope has been acquired prior to its public launch. TPG to acquire iiNet TPG has announced that it will acquire the remaining shares of iiNet. Currently it owns 6.25 percent of the ISP, and will be paying $8.60 per iiNet share to complete the acquisition. This values the acquisition at approximately $1.4 billion. The acquisition will increase TPG's broadband customer base to more than 1.7 million. News Corp acquires VCCircle News Corp has acquired the Indian media company VCCircle Network, which runs business-related sites like VCCircle.com, Techcircle.in, VCCEdge, VCCircle Training. Its 100 employees across India will become part of News Corp’s India team. News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said of the acquisition, “This important investment is a sign of our faith in India’s future and our enthusiasm for working with and building up emerging talents in the country. India is an increasingly meaningful part of our portfolio, which is itself increasingly digital and global.” P.V. Sahad, founder and CEO of VCCircle Network, said, “For the past decade, we have built a strong franchise with proprietary data, information, content, and networking capabilities around India’s digital business world. Being a part of News Corp will now allow us to accelerate our already aggressive growth plans.” Softonic acquires AppCrawlr Softonic, a site allowing users to compare desktop software, has acquired AppCrawlr, a service which compares apps according to things like features, price, and what it helps users do. TechCrunch reports that AppCrawlr will continue running as its technology is built into Softonic, which has 100 million monthly users, while its two founders will also moving to Softonic. AppCrawlr founder Joel Fisher told TechCrunch that “to grow globally and to apply the technology to its full potential, it was very compelling for us to join a larger company that has both the resources and the shared vision to make a much bigger impact.” PayPal acquires CyActive PayPal has confirmed its acquisition of CyActive, an Israeli malware detection startup, which will play a major role in its new security centre in Israel. James Barrese, chief technology officer and senior vice president of PayPal, said in a statement, “The acquisition of CyActive will bring great talent and immediately add “future-proof” technology to PayPal’s world-class security platform. With CyActive, we’ll have even more ways to proactively predict and prevent security threats from ever affecting our customers.” Leaked reports have valued the acquisition at around $60 million. Percentil acquires Kirondo Spanish startup Percentil has acquired German startup Kirondo. The two companies both sell pre-owned clothing that kids have barely worn or outgrown - basically, they deal with hand-me-downs. TechCrunch reported that the deal will see Percentil acquire all of Kirondo’s stock, as well as its website and brand. More than 20 staff will stay on, including two of its founders. SugarCRM acquires Stitch Customer relationship management solution - and Salesforce competitor - SugarCRM has bought out Stitch, a kind of virtual assistant app for salespeople. Jason McDowall, co-founder and head of product at Stitch, said in a statement, “We’re very excited to be part of the SugarCRM family. We’re proud of the work we’ve done, applying intelligence at the intersection of CRM, email and calendar data to make people more productive. We share the same vision as SugarCRM, and by combining our teams, we’re uniquely positioned to help shape the future of customer relationship management.” SugarCRM has announced that future releases of Sugar will be enhanced with Stitch capabilities. Lamido merges with Lazada Rocket Internet is closing its Southeast Asian consumer marketplace Lamido, merging it with its other ecommerce store, Lamido. Maximillian Bittner, CEO of Lazada Group, told TechCrunch, “Lamido was a Lazada venture originally set up to offer a consumer marketplace platform separated from Lazada. Over the last year, third party sales have become the dominant driver of Lazada’s sales explosion with the share of third party sales growing from less than 10 percent, at the time of Lamido’s launch, to 75 percent today. With the rapid growth of both Lazada and Lamido marketplaces, we have experienced an increasing overlap between the customer and seller bases across the two platforms.” He added that integration will give buyers and sellers a better experience. iPortal acquires ThinkOfLiving  The Malaysian iPortal Group, which owns property listing sites from across Asia, has acquired Thailand startup ThinkOfLiving. According to TechInAsia, the acquisition consists of a base payment of about US$4.6 million, as well as $1.5 million in newly-issued shares and a variable component dependent on the financial performance of the business. ThinkOfLiving will continue to operate as it has. Square acquires Kili Technology Kili Technology, a Canadian payment processing startup, has been acquired by financial services company Square. A statement from Square on the acquisition read: “The payments landscape is changing faster than ever — from EMV to NFC. That’s why we’ve acquired Kili Technology, a company that has developed silicon, electronics, and software that simplify and optimize payment processing.”

 Featured Image: Jack Dorsey, Founder, Twitter: Source: Reuters.