Consortium led by European PE firm Permira to buy Ancestry.com for $1.6 bn: report
22 Oct 2012
A consortium led by European private equity firm Permira Advisers agreed to buy US family research website Ancestry.com Inc for about $1.6 billion, The Wall Street Journal today reported, citing people familiar with the deal.
The consortium includes the Permira's co-investors; members of Ancestry.com's management, including CEO Tim Sullivan and CFO Howard Hochhauser, and Spectrum Equity Investors, which owns about 30 per cent of Ancestry.com.
Boston-based Spectrum Equity was the majority owner of Ancestry.com, which went public in 2009 at $13.50 a share.
The consortium has offered $32-a-share representing a premium of about 40 per cent to June trading price, when media reported that company was on the block.
The Provo, Utah-based company, which has a market capitalisation of about $964 million, had in June hired Frank Quattrone's Qatalyst Partners to find buyers for the 29 year-old company.
Several bidders, including three private equity firms looked at the company in an auction process but none of them met the company's price expectations, Reuters had said in August.
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