Time Warner's AOL withdraws TradeDoubler Bid, Not Enough Shareholder Support

Authored by Jay Baage on March 14, 2007 - 8:30pm.

Stockholm, Sweden - Time Warner Inc is withdrawing its $900 million offer for Swedish online marketing company TradeDoubler AB. The media company's AOL unit offered to acquire TradeDoubler in January, securing the support of management, but some major shareholders pressed the US media company to raise its offer, which it refused to do.

The Handelsbanken and SPP stakes together make them eighth-largest shareholder in Tradedoubler. Other key shareholders Alecta and AMF Pension last week, which together have 13 percent, told Reuters they rejected the offer. The acceptance deadline, extended once, expired on March 14.

"Given that there is an industrial logic between the two companies, they complement each other well, it should be in AOL's interest to get the deal through and raise the bid," said Christian Lee at independent analyst firm Redeye to Reuters.

"I think AOL will raise its bid, but the question is whether it will be enough that large institutional shareholders will think it is an attractive offer," he said. "An extension to the deadline is probably what will happen tomorrow."

"We made a full and fair offer, and we always said we didn't plan to raise it," an AOL spokesman said. "Our Advertising.com business in Europe is growing rapidly, and this will not affect our plans to aggressively expand it."

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More funds reject AOL bid for Tradedoubler (Reuters)