An ongoing saga, filled with much speculation, and come to an end. It is now official. Permira has acquired Ancestry.com. As always, whenever one company is acquired by another one, this will involve some changes.
Permira Advisors, LLC., have now officially entered into an agreement to acquire the popular genealogy website Ancestry.com. This ends the saga that has been going on for quite some time about whether or not Ancestry.com really was up for sale, and, if so, who the buyer would be.
The total transaction is said to be valued at around $1.6 billion. Permira will pay $32.00 a share for Ancestry.com stock. This amount is 41% higher than the closing price of Ancestry.com’s stock on June 5, 2012, the last day of trading before it was reported that Ancestry.com had hired a financial adviser for the purposes of a potential sale. That adviser, as you may know, was Qatalyst Partners LLC.
The buyout group, led by Permira, includes Ancestry.com’s co-investors. It also includes some members of Ancestry.com’s management, (Chief Executive Tim Sullivan and Chief Financial Officer Howard Hochhauser). Sullivan held a 5.2% stake in Ancestry.com. He and Hochhauser will both exchange a “substantial majority” of their stakes for equity in the buying group.
It also includes Spectrum Equity, which is the largest shareholder of Ancestry.com stock. Spectrum Equity has a 30% stake. It will exchange $100 million worth of Ancestry.com shares for shares of the buying group. The buying group includes Global Generations International Inc., and Global Generations Merger Sub.
In short, this deal is done. Neither Ancestry.com, nor Permira, can simply decide to walk away from this transaction now. If either decided to do that, they would pay a penalty refereed to as a “Break Up Fee”, or a termination fee. If Permira and the buying group back out, it has to pay Ancestry.com $75.6 million. If Ancestry.com backs out, it would have to pay the buying group $37.8 million.
What does this mean for genealogists who currently use Ancestry.com? Right now, nothing has specifically been announced in terms of changes to service, or access to records. It has been said that there is an interest in expanding Ancestry.com to Western Europe. The purpose of doing so would be to expand the potential customer base of the genealogy giant.
When one company acquires, or is acquired by, another company, it is customary for both companies to make some sort of official announcement about it on their blogs. This could mean that an announcement about the sale may appear on the Ancestry.com blog in the near future.
Image by 401(K) 2012 on Flickr