martyn_williams
Senior Correspondent

Reports: IAC to acquire Ask Jeeves for about $2B

news
Mar 21, 20051 min

Deal could be announced as early as Monday

Web search engine operator Ask Jeeves is close to agreeing to be acquired by IAC/InterActive, according to reports on the Web sites of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The two reports both say a deal could be announced as early as Monday.

The Wall Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter, said the acquisiton would be for $2 billion in stock while The New York Times, quoting an executive involved in the negotiations, said the value of the deal was about $1.9 billion.

IAC, led by Chairman and CEO Barry Diller, has built up a sizeable network of major Web sites over recent years through a succession of acquisitions. Its group sites include Expedia, Ticketmaster, Hotels.com, Match.com, UDate.com, and CitySearch. The company also owns a number of tele-shopping cable channels including Home Shopping Network in the U.S., Australia’s TVSN, Germany’s 9Live, and Japan’s Shop Channel.