A source close to Groupon board members said that anti-trust concerns ultimately forced Groupon to turn down Google's $6 billion offer. This source says the view on Groupon's board was that a Google-Groupon merger would draw more regulatory scrutiny than any other deal Google has ever done.
Google is currently undergoing two anti-trust investigations – one from Europe and another over the ITA deal. Google also went through severe regulatory trauma acquiring DoubleClick and AdMob. Anti-trust heat halted Google's move to take over Yahoo's search business.
Because of this view – that Google-Groupon might not be allowed to go through and that it would take months and months to find out the bad news – board members decided they would need a significant break-up fee if they were to accept Google's offer.
The source says the board wanted a break-up fee akin to the one Google gave DoubleClick. A source close to DoubleClick's executive team at the time of that merger tells us the company "got significant protection." In agreeing to acquire AdMob for $750 million, Google also agreed to a $700 million kill fee. Google balked and would not agree to it.
This made the choice easy for Groupon's board, and they walked away from the deal. There was too much risk involved to take a deal that would only pay a 3X multiple on the $2 billion run-rate Groupon started seeing in November and December. [MSNBC]
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.