The White House will reportedly confirm that former telecommunications lobbyist Tom Wheeler will be nominated to chair the Federal Communications Commission. Current FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will act as interim chairman while outgoing Chair Julius Genachowski enjoys his luxurious new life as a fellow at the Aspen Institute policy think tank.

A decade ago, before he was a venture capitalist at Washington D.C.’s Core Capital Partners, Wheeler helped telecommunications companies secure more wireless spectrum and protected them against lawmakers who wanted to ban cell phones in public areas for fear of radiation. “Tom Wheeler is the rock star of telecom,” said president of PBS Pat Mitchell. Years later, in 2008, he raised a cool million for President Obama’s campaign.

Genachowski famously killed the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, and its questionable whether Wheeler would have done the same, given his background. In 2011, he wrote a cryptic blog post about the merger, but his confusing obsession with rhetorical flair and history make it hard to understand what he believes.

So, instead of copying and pasting speculative opinion about Wheeler from the host of political lobbies looking for a quick press hit, we’ll wait for new information to surface and update readers as soon as we know more.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Some consolidation in the world of open source database startups: SkySQL, a provider of open source database solutions, is merging with Monty Program Ab, the creators of MariaDB, an open source database technology that is used by Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and other services. The merger is also a reunion of sorts: both companies employ key people from MySQL, the database company that was bought by Sun in 2008, and in turn became a part of Oracle. Monty Program was founded and led by Michael “Monty” Widenius, the founder of MySQL.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; the merger is expected to complete in four months.

As part of the deal, SkySQL says it will dedicate more resources to MariaDB to make it more interoperable with both NoSQL and SQL database systems, and it will also see SkySQL develop new solutions that allow users of MySQL and MariaDB databases “to manage their data effectively in the enterprise and cloud.” SkySQL says that MariaDB currently sees some 500,000 user downloads per year, not counting community Linux distributions.

Along with the merger, SkySQL announced its membership of the newly-formed, independent MariaDB Foundation, with money and other resources being dedicated to its development. “It is a pleasure to have a company representing the reunited core team of our code base joining the Foundation at its inception,” said Simon Phipps, CEO of the MariaDB Foundation, in a statement.

SkySQL says that its CEO, Patrik Sallner, will lead the merged company as CEO. Widenius, meanwhile, will be CTO of the MariaDB Foundation.

The deal could be a sign of how smaller open source database companies are looking to address challenges against competition from bigger players like Oracle and IBM, and how they can better ensure their longevity.

As described in a quirky comment from Widenius, “The MySQL database is named after my first daughter, My. The MariaDB database is named after my second daughter, Maria. With this merger and my own role in the MariaDB Foundation, I’m ensuring that the MariaDB project will remain ‘open source forever,’ while knowing that enterprise and community users of both the MySQL & MariaDB databases will benefit from best-in-breed products, services and support provided by SkySQL. And who doesn’t want the best for their kids?”

It is also a talent grab. “By bringing on board the talented MariaDB developer team, SkySQL proposes a comprehensive partnership to leading open source database users,” Sallner said in a statement. “We are committed to develop MariaDB into the most versatile open source database. We look forward to working with the MariaDB Foundation as they engage with developers and users of MariaDB as well as with their important mission of ensuring the independence of the MariaDB project itself.” Distilled down to actual challenges, SkySQL notes that issues it will need to address to make sure people stick with it are support for all MySQL database releases; interoperability; competitive costs and database security.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

GetGlue today announced that it is not merging with Viggle, though the social TV app maker said in a statement on its blog that “the two companies remain friendly and think highly of each other.”

A Viggle-GetGlue merger was first announced in November and the deal between the two competitors, which never closed, could have been worth $70 million or more. Though the deal looked good in concept, however, it started to fall apart when you took a closer look at the numbers, as Ryan Lawler wrote. For one thing, the merger was contingent on Viggle raising an additional $60 million in funding, which it had difficulty securing quickly–just last week, the two companies disclosed in a SEC filing that they were “discussing an extension of such date and other potential modifications to the Merger Agreement” and Viggle said it was still expecting to raise the money from a strategic investor.

Meanwhile, Viggle CEO Robert Sillerman was fronting his own cash for the deal, extending his existing loan agreement with Viggle from $12.5 million to $15 million in mid-December. Viggle also seemed to be using up cash much faster than it was getting it. The company had just $1.7 million in revenues through November, but spent $32.6 million on operators.

Both companies said they don’t have additional comments on the canceled merger beyond GetGlue’s blog post.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Those of you waiting for the tie-up of second-screen apps GetGlue and Viggle — Giggle? — to close will have to wait just a little bit longer. The merger of the companies, which was announced in November, has yet to close thanks to expected additional financing for Viggle which hasn’t come through.

To recap: Viggle announced plans to acquire GetGlue for $25 million in cash and 48.3 million shares of stock. But Viggle didn’t actually have the cash on hand to get the deal done, and so the whole thing was contingent on $60 million in new financing from an unnamed strategic partner. Viggle expected that financing to close within 30 days, and as a result its merger had a deadline of December 19 for its close.

Well, that date has come and gone — and so, the two companies are “discussing an extension of such date and other potential modifications to the Merger Agreement,” according to an SEC filing. Representatives from both Viggle and GetGlue have confirmed that they are working on an extension. And Viggle still expects to raise its $60 million from a strategic investor, but as a source close to the situation told TechCrunch, “it isn’t done until it’s done.”

In the meantime, Viggle CEO Robert Sillerman continues to support the venture with his own cash, with continued extension of his loan agreement with the company. In mid-December, Sillerman extended his existing loan agreement with Viggle from $12.5 million to $15 million, fronting an additional $2.5 million to the venture. That loan was presumably made to keep the lights on while the company waits for new money to come in.

In the meantime, Viggle seems to be burning cash at an alarming rate. Viggle had just $1.7 million in revenues through November, while spending $32.6 million on operations. While it’s making some cuts, it still expects capital requirements of $22 million through 2013. That new funding, when it comes through, should help keep it afloat. But Viggle will probably need to do more belt tightening if it expects to make a long-lasting business out of social TV. We’ll keep you posted on how that’s going.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Softbank has confirmed the news that it is buying Sprint, the third-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., for $20.1 billion (¥1.571 trillion). In fact, this is turning out to be full acquisition of what Softbank is calling “New Sprint.”: “As a result of the transaction SOFTBANK will own approximately 70% of the fully-diluted (as used herein, not giving effect to out-of-the-money options) shares of New Sprint (as defined below), which will own 100% of the shares of Sprint.” Softbank says that the combined company will be the world’s third largest in terms of revenues.

The news appears to have crashed the Sprint website. At least for now the site is only appearing in plain text and is taking time to load any updates, such as the link for the webcast (which it hastily announced at 2am Eastern time) to announce the news. That webcast is here.

Softbank’s announcement lays out in some detail how the deal will work, and it confirms many of the facts from yesterday’s CNBC report. Those noted that Softbank would buy $8 billion in shares from Sprint directly at $5.25 each; it would put out a tender for $12 billion of shares — this is actually going to be $12.1 billion, Softbank says — from shareholders at $7.30 a share (Sprint’s last trade on Friday was for $5.73/share).

Part of that $8 billion will include a $3.1 billion convertible bond, Softbank says.

The heads of Softbank and Sprint are currently holding a press conference in Japan covering the news. So far, Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son has made a big argument for synergies between the two companies: namely, they are both developing LTE on the same frequency, which helps with economies of scale. Now Dan Hesse, Sprint’s CEO, is talking about how Sprint’s number-three position in the market. “It’s number one in terms of revenue and ARPU growth,” he’s noted.

“This is pro-competitive and pro-consumer” because it helps fight the “AT&T and Verizon duopoly,” Hesse said. He also points out that in fact there is another synergy between the two. “When we look at what Softbank has accomplished as the number-three carrier in Japan, we can learn something from that.”

Hesse will remain the CEO of “New Sprint,” the companies say.

Hesse is also making a big play in terms of how Sprint is looking forward, and trying to put a lot of its legacy business (that includes its push-to-talk IDEN network, and that WiMax) behind it. “We are entering an investment phase at Sprint,” he said. Network Vision, its massive upgrade plan, should be completed by 2014, and Softbank in its announcement on the deal notes that its $8 billion direct share purchase will help Sprint complete that strategy (largely in the form of that $3.1 billion convertible bond).

Termination fees. Softbank and Sprint have detailed what the termination fees may be for this deal if it doesn’t go ahead either because Softbank doesn’t get financing, or if Sprint has a bigger offer, or if shareholders do not approve the deal. Those fees are as follows: Softbank must pay Sprint a termination fee of $600 million if the merger does not close because SOFTBANK does not obtain financing. Sprint must pay Softbank a termination fee of $600 million if the merger does
not close because Sprint accepts a superior offer by a third party. Sprint must pay up to $75 million of Softbank’s expenses if Sprint’s shareholders do not approve the transaction at their shareholder meeting.

The idea of another bidder swooping into the process should not be under-estimated. Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile USA (which itself had an M&A acquisition stumble when its AT&T merger was blocked by regulators earlier this year) is another carrier whose name has been floated in connection with Sprint. Both Softbank and DT are apparently gunning for MetroPCS, a smaller carrier, both for spectrum and subscribers. Whether that resolves in two international carriers each owning more assets, or one taking all the chips, still remains to be seen.

More to come. Full announcement below.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook has today moved one step closer in its proposed acquisition of photo-sharing app Instagram. The Office of Fair Trading in the UK has given the deal the all-clear.

The announcement was made via an RNS regulatory statement, which briefly says the OFT would not refer the deal to the Competition Commission. A spokesperson for the OFT has given us more detail:

“We examined this in light of them both offering social networking services, looking at potential competition in social networking services, and in the supply of photo apps and whether the merger might result in the merging parties limiting people from others using other apps or other sites,” he said. “In brief we concluded that there are several relatively strong competitors to Instgram which appear to pose a stronger constraint to Instagram than Facebook does.”

He would not elaborate on what other apps these might be, but there are hundreds in the app store, along with native camera capabilities on devices themselves, that would serve as would-be competition.

He further added that the OFT does not “have reason to believe that Instagram would be uniquely placed to compete against Facebook either as a provider of advertising space or as a photo service.

He noted that the OFT also looked at “whether people would be limited in posting to Facebook or Instagram” without using the two together, as a result of the acquisition. “The evidence we received showed that the parties would not be able to pursue such a strategy.”

The main point of the OFT review was to see whether the deal to buy Instagram would result in a ‘substantial lessening of competition’ among all players. If it did, the OFT would refer the deal to the Competition Commission for review. The OFT reviews all cases in which the companies either make more than £70 million ($110 million) annually, or control more than 25 percent of their market.

The Federal Trade Commission, which is also reviewing the merger, investigates any deal with a value greater than $68.2 million.

When the deal was first announced in April, the price was pegged at $1 billion: $300 million in cash and 23 million shares in Facebook based on the price in the private markets. When Facebook IPO’d that price went up to $1.2 billion. At today’s price (right now just above $21/share), Instagram would be sold for about $796.8 million.

Facebook had originally said its purchase of Instagram would close by June, but as regulatory investigations have continued, it moved that back to the end of this year.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Longtime UK gaming community startup Playfire has been acquired by Green Man Gaming, an independent games retailer in Europe. Terms were undisclosed, however sources tell us that it “was a good deal for shareholders” and provides for more upside in the future, based on performance. A social network designed entirely for console and desktop video gamers, Playfire launched fully in 2008 and had raised $3.1 million from Atomico and angels including Michael Birch and William Reeve. The companies have characterised the acquisition as a ‘merger’ which suggests all parties are now looking to Green Man for a future liquidity event such as a sale or further merger. Certainly UK high street chain Game Group, which has pulled out of administration, might be on the look-out for a new vehicle with this kind of traction.

Founded in 2007, Playfire now has amassed more than 1m gamers which allows members to track their gameplay, see what their friends are playing, and follow new games. When gamers sign up, the service automatically captures real-time data from their gaming accounts across PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms and sends it into the service. In many ways it pre-dated the kinds of activity we see across Twitter and Facebook apps. Playfire says it now has almost 100 million individual pieces of data and insights into the buying and playing habits of core gamers worldwide.

Founder Kieran O’Neill will only be staying on in a consultancy role, but retains a “significant stake” in the company. GMG will be integrating its existing retail customers and Payfire users close together to reach around 1.5m gamers.

Kieran O’Neill, Founder, Playfire, said: “The deal will give us the chance to expand and improve Playfire, while being able to capitalize on the large community we have built. There are so many things we want to do in 2012 and this deal will allow us to execute faster.”

Paul Sulyok, Managing Director, Green Man Gaming, added: “We’ve grown Green Man Gaming organically since selling our first PC download in 2010, and the merger with Playfire is a sound fit that deepens our relationship with gamers and prepares the business for its next stage of growth. Playfire’s powerful community strengthens our current position in the PC games space, and also offers us an ideal entry point into the console market.”

Green Man Gaming sells pre-owned PC games and in theory can do a lot more marketing of pre-owned games into consoles now via the Playfire community.

The move strengthens Green Man Gaming’s existing PC games retail business which services 155 countries and gives it access to the lucrative console space for the first time.

Playfire was originally founded by O’Neill, Seb Hayes and Ben Phillips.

However, this acquisition is not quite the home-run one might have expected from Playfire. It’s main competitor, Raptr, raised raised $27 million in funding, and is the only other company with a similar product to Playfire. Despite raising ten times more cash, Playfire was bigger than Raptr, according to Compete. Plus, Raptr didn’t have full PS3 tracking. So it’s something of a mystery why Playfire couldn’t raise more cash or go further. Perhaps founders and backers wanted to move on?

As usual this kind of decision comes down to options on the table.

Our sources say a further fund-raise had been considered and attracted interest, but was not pursued. You can understand why. This would have meant a third dilution amongst 3 founders (a lot of dilution), requiring a much larger exit to make it worthwhile. The requirement for a larger exit reduces the potential acquirers in the market. So with Playfire not being the kind of company that IPOs, it looks like the board decided on the next best option: sale.

Certainly O’Neill is known to be one of the Uk’s best tech entrepreneurs, so perhaps he and his cohorts have a new plan up their sleeves? Let’s hope so.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As a wave of new hopefuls enter the online travel market using social media elements to stand out from the pack, two more traditional sites that focus on vacation rental accommodation, Roomorama and Lofty, are merging to scale up, and they’re picking up a $2.1 million seed round to help them along the way.

The list of new investors in Roomorama, as the combined company will be called, include names that are already connected to the online travel market, including Jose Marin (investor in Russian travel site HipWay and hotel booking site GuestMob); PROfounders Capital, Lerer Media Ventures, and Thrive Capital Partners.

Fabrice Grinda, the French founder of Lofty and himself a serial investor in a number of travel sites, says that the merger came out of the complementary needs of the two companies.

Both focus on the mid-range to high-end travel market. However, Roomorama had the customers but lacked inventory; and Lofty had inventory but not enough customers to fill it. “In a the travel marketplace you need a critical mass of both buyers and sellers to make it work,” Grinda says.

Equally, there is a nice fit between the two in terms of geography: Roomorama is based in Singapore and does a lot of business in Asia, while Grinda says that a full third of Lofty’s business is in the U.S. with another third in Europe.

Unlike some newer sites like Airbnb, which is disrupting the traditional travel business by letting users bypass hotels for lower-cost alternatives in people’s homes; or Casahop, a house-swapping site that does away with payments altogether, Roomorama is something of a throwback to an older business model based around offering properties from rental market professionals, who manage those accommodations with all the bells and whistles, and prices to match.

The company says that at the moment, the average gross booking value on the site is $1,300, with some 80 percent of people booking their places for between eight and 14 nights. Currently, there are about 50,000 properties on the site covering 3,600 locations. The aim is to double that by 2012 while keeping a focus on high-quality properties, reliability and the ability to close deals quickly.

Grinda notes that in the merger, the management team and the B2B sales team of Lofty are joining Roomorama; those who work on the technical side are not, as Lofty makes the transition to Roomorama’s platform. Roomorama’s co-founder and COO Jia En Teo will now share that role with Lofty’s CEO Brion Olivier, who now becomes the co-COO.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

6waves Lolapps, the social gaming company that was formed out of a merger just half a year ago, shed most of its employees on the development side today to focus on publishing other studios’ titles.

The decision today seems to undo some of what that merger agreement created last July and we hear it had to do with a limited runway of cash. Last summer, social gaming company Lolapps merged with game publisher 6waves to form a new entity that was a dual producer and publisher. They then raised funding from Korean gaming giant Nexon and Insight Venture Partners. The amount they raised was undisclosed, but an SEC filing showed a $35 million round.

The company insists, however, that the merger is still in place and Lolapps is not being spun out. They didn’t disclose how many people were laid off.

“6waves Lolapps will now focus on working with independent developers to launch and grow their mobile and social games,” said chief executive Rex Ng in a statement. “As a result, we have restructured the company to focus on key functions which include developer outreach, product advisory, user growth initiatives and our publishing platform.”

Going forward, the company will focus on publishing. Its existing titles will continue to work and 6waves Lolapps is looking for a third-party team to service them. Escalation Studios, the Dallas-based gaming studio it acquired recently, will still continue to do mobile development and Smartron5, the other company it acquired in China, will still focus on that market.

Not everything is being lost from the merger. When 6waves combined with Lolapps, it picked up the company’s infrastructure and platform technology. 6waves had some technology that could predict how games would perform financially.

The titles that were still in development including Ravenshire Castle will still come out. 6waves Lolapps’ chief product officer Arjun Sethi and one of Lolapps’ original co-founders Kavin Stewart will personally fund a spin-off to make that happen.

All in all, the layoffs are just another sign of how challenging the environment is for gaming companies on Facebook. If Zynga has been showing progressively slower revenue growth on the Facebook platform, you can imagine how the smaller game developers are feeling the pinch.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While Google waits for the United States Department of Justice to sign off on their proposal to merge with handset maker Motorola Mobility, the European Commission has officially given the deal their approval.

The decision is a welcome one for the folks in Mountain View, as the European Commission initially showed some hesitance about the matter. When first tasked with reviewing the $12.5 billion transaction, members of the commission called to Google to provide additional information to support their cause. What’s more, a U.S. consumer advocacy group publicly called on the commission to strike the merger, citing fears of a Google-dominated mobile space.

According to Commission Vice President Joaquín Almunia, the acquisition was approved because “upon careful examination, this transaction does not itself raise competition issues.” That isn’t to say that the commission can now wash their hands of the matter, as they still plan to keep their eyes on the actions of major wireless players.

“Of course, the Commission will continue to keep a close eye on the behaviour of all market players in the sector,” he went on to say. “Particularly the increasingly strategic use of patents.”

That last bit is terribly important given the fierce patents wars that Google, Apple, and other mobile companies are waging the world over. Should the Google-Motorola deal go through, the folks in Mountain View will find themselves in possession of Motorola’s 17,000 patents and nearly 8,000 pending applications — a considerable addition to their existing arsenal that could allow them to more vigorously defend against lawsuits lobbed at them by competitors.

Google could use those patents for more than just defending themselves, and that still has the commission on edge. Almunia expressed concern to reporters that Google could abuse their new treasure trove of patents, and noted that while their concerns weren’t enough to warrant block the merger, they would be “vigilant” going forward.

Meanwhile, Google VP and Deputy General Counsel Don Harrison took to the official Google Blog today to celebrate the commission’s decision, and to remind users that closing the deal will “supercharge Android.”

“The combination of Google and Motorola Mobility will help supercharge Android,” he said. “It will also enhance competition and offer consumers faster innovation, greater choice and wonderful user experiences.”

With Europe signing off on the deal, and legislators in the United States expected to do the same in short order, Google must wait for official approval from China, Israel, and Taiwan before everything can be finalized.

Developing…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch