Bertelsmann Nederland B.Y. and DealTime Form Joint European Venture and DealTime Acquires Bertelsmann's Online Comparison-Shopping Service evenbetter.com

From Yahoo! BizWire

NEW YORK and HEIDELBERG, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 19, 2000
DealTime, the leading independent online comparison-shopping service, today announced the acquisition of the leading online comparison-shopping service for books, music and movies, evenbetter.com, and the formation of a Joint European Venture with evenbetter's parent company, Bertelsmann, the fourth largest media company and one of the largest e-commerce players in the world. The total deal has an approximate value of US $100 million.

Under the agreement, DealTime will acquire evenbetter.com, formerly DealPilot.com AG, Bertelsmann's majority owned comparison-shopping service. Bertelsmann will take a stake in DealTime's parent company, DealTime Ltd. and will also invest in DealTime's subsidiary, DealTime Europe, in return for a 49% stake of this entity. DealTime Europe and evenbetter both currently operate comparison-shopping Web sites in Germany and the UK, and plan to launch in France and Italy later this year.

"What attracted us to DealTime was the broad scope of product categories they search, their leadership position in the US, and their superior scalable technology which is complementary to evenbetter," said Klaus Eierhoff, CEO of Bertelsmann Multimedia and board member of Bertelsmann AG. "Looking at the e-commerce landscape, we saw DealTime as the overall leader in comparison shopping and evenbetter as the niche leader within the books, music and movies categories. We think this combined entity will be best suited to capitalize on the potential for e-commerce in Europe and around the globe."

evenbetter.com, a privately held, majority-owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann, is one of the leading players in the online comparison-shopping field. evenbetter now searches three major categories - books, movies and music - and received 475,000 unique users in April (Source: PC Data). In addition, evenbetter's download tool, evenbetter Express, which enables consumers to obtain price comparisons instantly without having to leave an online merchant's Web site, has grown its customer base to several hundred thousand users since its introduction in January, 2000.

"In less than a year we have built the leading comparison shopping service, with more traffic and merchants than anyone else in this space," said Dan Ciporin, president and CEO of DealTime. "Marrying DealTime with Bertelsmann's significant media assets worldwide and evenbetter's comparison-shopping expertise in books, music and movies, enhances our position as the ultimate buyer's gateway on the Web."

Under this new agreement, evenbetter users will be redirected to the corresponding DealTime sites, offering shoppers access to both DealTime's and evenbetter's combined categories. DealTime will also now offer its users evenbetter's downloadable browser companion, evenbetter Express. The evenbetter headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany will become the new headquarters of the Joint European Venture between DealTime and Bertelsmann and Elisabeth Schick, formerly CEO of evenbetter, will become the CEO of DealTime Europe.

"We are pleased to become part of the DealTime family, and look forward to integrating our categories, technologies and talent," said Elisabeth Schick, CEO of DealTime Europe. "The combination of our European resources and DealTime's comprehensive coverage of more than 17 categories will naturally position us as the leading comparison-shopping service in Europe and the world."

About DealTime
DealTime, the leading online comparison-shopping service, is a gateway to a rich information exchange between consumers who are ready to buy and merchants who want to sell a wide variety of consumer goods and services. Through its Web site, www.dealtime.com , DealTime empowers consumers with the ability to compare models, brands, merchant types and prices from merchants across the Web, as well as offline sellers. DealTime's robust, scalable technology further benefits consumers by providing highly relevant search results and the ability to deliver information through wireless devices, including web-enabled mobile phones and personal digital assistants. DealAgent, DealTime's dynamic pricing engine, empowers merchants, manufacturers and industry analysts by providing aggregated indication-of-interest data about consumer buying activity through DealTime. DealTime is a multi-national private company, venture-backed by key strategic and financial partners worldwide including America Online, Time Warner, Bank of America, Singapore Telecom and others. Visit www.dealtime.com in the US, www.dealtime.co.uk in the United Kingdom and www.dealtime.de in Germany.

About evenbetter.com AG
evenbetter.com AG, the leading e-commerce "infomediary" specializing in price comparison, is a privately held, majority-owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG with offices in New York, NY, and Heidelberg, Germany. Founded in 1997 by creators Christopher Muenchhoff and Christoph Janz, the first version of evenbetter was officially launched in late 1997 to track the bottom-line lowest prices on book titles sold over the Internet. Since then, evenbetter has expanded to include price comparisons for music, videos/DVDs, and computer hardware and software, as well as several new features like a shopping cart function. In April 2000, evenbetter.com launched localized web sites in Europe to kick-off an aggressive international expansion.

About Bertelsmann AG
Bertelsmann AG is the fourth-largest media company in the world, with consolidated revenues of approximately US $16.4 billion. The company has significant interests in all areas of media, including book, magazine and newspaper publishing, music, television, multimedia, film and radio. With more than 600 individual companies, Bertelsmann currently employs nearly 76,000 people in 53 countries.

Contact:
DealTime.com
Patricia Sugrue
212/905-8030
[email protected]

or

The Weber Group
Alana Gentle
617/520-7280
[email protected]

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