The race between Europe’s Groupon clones reached a high point yesterday as it was announced that the Samwer brother’s CityDeal was being taken over by the American group-discount giant.
First coverage by German media groups (Netzökonom-Blog and Deutsche Startups) announced the deal at 22:00 CET yesterday.
Holger Schimdt wrote:
The sites from Citydeal will take over the Groupon name and design within the next months. In total, Groupon will then be active in over 140 cities and in 18 countries”.
Yet unknown is whether the CityDeal investors (the Samwer brothers, Holtzbrinck, Otto eVenture Capital, Kinnevik) have been paid out in cash or have received stock in Groupon.
Groupon has recently received $135 million financing from the Russian Digital Sky Technologies, who also hold major stakes in Facebook and Zynga.
Insider comments on the background thinking behind the takeover has been published by Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason on the Groupon blog.
Related posts:
- Groupon Fever: Spain’s Groupalia Gets 2.5 Million Euro Financing
- Groupon Fever: LivingSocial Nabs Another $25 Million
- Groupon Fever: CityDeal Gets Another 5 Million Euro
- Groupon Fever: BuyWithMe Gets $5.5 Million
Originally posted as two articles in German (1, 2) by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
