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Congratulations, AME Info!

Posted by Martin on July 4, 2006 at 03:58 am
6 Comments

Well done, AME Info boyz!! As reported today, AME Info has been bought by Emap Communications in a deal worth $29m. The involvement of Emap, one of the largest UK based publishing houses operating in the Middle East (owner of MEED), clearly shows that online is booming and that a London publicly listed company believes in the future growth of online in the region.

29$ million including incentives is not a bad deal and clearly indicates a growing benchmark for mergers and acquisitions within the industry. If I remember correctly, Maktoob sold about 40% of its shares for approximately 4 million US$ netting at a market capitalization of 10 million US$ at that time, so let's speculate who is next and for what mark-up ? Emap has a lot of content to offer and will surely make the life of Mena FN, Mena Report, Strategiy and Zawya more competitive - which we as advertisers and representatives appreciate. More and better content always drives competition and adds value to the consumer. Again, congratulations Lars & Klaus and I hope one day we will get an invitation - when you retire on your own private island - outside the Middle East :-)

Martin

Author: Martin | Published: July 4, 2006 at 03:58 am

My passion is obviously the web. Trying to balance off the geekyness in front of a computer by running, mountain + road biking and here and there a game of squash. Favourite destinations: Asia all over the place, and little hide-out in Cyprus and heart beating for Cape Town. Music: Whatever fits on my iPod, and definitly a full collection of U2.

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  • Klaus

    July 9, 2006 at 10:33 pm

    Magnus:
    We will into making it more obvious in the very near future


    Yousuf:
    Yes we have a lot of stuff in the pipeline

  • Yousuf Philips

    July 8, 2006 at 07:00 am

    Great news Klaus. So does this mean that we can look forward to AME Info growing alot further?

  • Magnus

    July 6, 2006 at 03:52 pm

    Klaus, thanks for the input. Yes, I think it could be clearer. As a new reader on your site, how are you supposed to know what you just wrote? I think it should clearly say that something is a press release, or based on a press release, when it is.

    //Magnus

  • Klaus

    July 5, 2006 at 09:41 am

    Thanks guys appreciate the nice words. EmiratesMac - we have always posted press releases in the following categories only:

    Appointments
    Company News
    Event News
    Research and Studies

    - all under the heading "News Releases" on your left-hand side navigation - and the actual category is highlighted for each story you reach. Perhaps it is not clear enough though - I'll give it some thought.

    The rest of the content on AME Info is either from contributors or written our own team of journalists.

    Cheers
    Klaus

  • Mohammad Itani

    July 4, 2006 at 05:34 pm

    The acquisition of AME Info by Emap have again proved that the online industry in the ME is going no where but forward. Another factor which plays a role in developing the potential of the market is the traffic audit that AME Info took the initative in. Now we see other portals within the ME such as Albawaba and others also following the same trend. If this shows something, it shows that the online industry is on the rise no matter what the skeptics say.

  • EmiratesMac

    July 4, 2006 at 01:35 pm

    I'll say well done as well... but it's it frustrating that you hardly ever know on AMEInfo, Strategiy, and other sites whether you're reading something a journalist wrote as a story for their site, or whether someone just did copy-paste from a press-release.

    Look at this (http://www.ameinfo.com/85716.html) for example. It's a press release, but does it clearly tell the reader that, or should the reader just know or assume that? It says "Posted by ... Assistant News Editor" but I'm not sure that's enough.

    Or am I just missing something?

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