Batu69 Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 The Chinese consortium has secured enough support for its Opera offer to proceed with its $1.2bn takeover of the Norwegian browser maker. Opera's Chinese suitors have secured the minimum level of shareholder support they demanded to proceed with their $1.2bn offer for the Norwegian software firm. Opera announced today that a preliminary tally of acceptances had passed the threshold set by the Chinese consortium, which is led by Chinese investment Golden Brick Silk Road (Shenzhen) Equity Investment Fund II, along with limited partners, gaming firm, Kunlun, and search and security firm, Qihoo 360, and Yonglian Investment. The consortium announced in March that the offer would only stand if it had gained an acceptance rate of at least 90 percent of the total number of shares in Opera. Following an extension in April, that offer expired on Tuesday afternoon. Opera said today that based on the preliminary count, the condition had been met but that a final deal was still subject to further conditions. "The preliminary result of the offer indicates that the minimum acceptance condition ... has been met. The final result will be published as soon as it is available," Opera said. Opera said the consortium had received acceptances for a total 132,91,316 Opera shares, representing approximately 90.6 percent of the outstanding share capital and 90.9 percent of the votes. The consortium still needs approval from relevant US and Chinese regulators, which it expects to have in place by June. Despite board support for the deal from the outset, the offer had only achieved a 72 percent acceptance rate. Last week it was still well short of the 90 percent acceptance mark, and investors were warned that the offer would be withdrawn if it wasn't reached. An independent assessment by Carnegie AS in April estimated the offer of 71 NOK per share represented an approximately 53 percent premium on the closing price on 4 February. Opera began scouting for potential buyers last August, which culminated in the February offer by the Chinese consortium. The deal is expected to open up Opera to the Chinese market and help members of the consortium expand beyond China. Though Opera's share of the desktop browser market is minor compared with Chrome, Mozilla, and Internet Explorer, it does count over 120 million users of its mobile browser products. Moreover, Opera has shown a willingness to experiment with its browsers, recently introducing a built-in ad blocker, a built-in VPN for its desktop browser, as well as a new power-saving mode. Article source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vissha Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 This is a serious mistake. Selling to a consortium with presence of Qihoo 360 is very harmful to Opera . We all knew about Qihoo 360 who is a master in lying as they cheated with dual engine in AV tests. They have huge privacy issue with most of their products including AV, Browser,.... They even show ads more than any free AV. Hence, in my opinion, this deal is a downside to Opera Product Security, Opera Brand, Opera Fans and mainly the Opera Presto Fans as most ignored to move to Chromium bcoz of Google. This should not happen and this deal should be stopped Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeetPirate Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Opera was my favourite browser I used at work. This is sad news, I guess it's time to delete my Opera link account before it goes to China. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 2 hours ago, LeetPirate said: Opera was my favourite browser I used at work. This is sad news, I guess it's time to delete my Opera link account before it goes to China. same here it was my favorite chromium based one anyway, now I will just use slimjet for chromium.. i may just install chromium in place of opera lol . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeetPirate Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 I checked out slimjet but the picture of the family at the beach used in the maximum privacy protection section looked weird and disturbing so I will try Vivaldi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 2 minutes ago, LeetPirate said: I checked out slimjet but the picture of the family at the beach used in the maximum privacy protection section looked weird and disturbing so I will try Vivaldi i also have a portable of Vivaldi still sort of new and ruff around the edges but its OK . Don't let the picture fool you back when block webrtc and block canvas extension for chromium stop working Slimjet was the only one that you fix these problems without extensions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rseiler Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Re Opera's probable new owner, what about who runs some of the alternatives, like Slimjet? Who are they, exactly? And close competitor, Cent? I have no idea. At least with Vivaldi, we know exactly who's behind that (I agree Vivaldi is not quite ready for prime time yet for many serious users--you can't dock the developer tools, for example, and you may never be able to due to the radical rethink of the UI--another six months might do it though). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc71520 Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 I've thrown Opera away since v12. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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