Barry Diller has a 300-foot yacht, Diane von Furstenberg for a wife and a portfolio of Internet companies (from the Home Shopping Network to LendingTree.com) under his IAC/Inter Active Corp. business.
Barry Diller has a 300-foot yacht, Diane von Furstenberg for a wife and a portfolio of Internet companies (from the Home Shopping Network to LendingTree.com) under his IAC/Inter Active Corp. business. But now the man who brought us the Fox Television Network also has a majority stake in an 8-year-old computer game development business in Eugene.
GarageGames, a 70-employee company known for its Torque Game Engine (an engine is software that game developers license to render graphics and run the basics of game play), came into the IAC fold for a figure reported by Portfolio magazine to be around $50 million. For that, Diller’s company got a majority stake in the Eugene development shop and the promise of a foothold in the frontier of Web browser-based gaming.
Last month, GarageGames unveiled its InstantAction online game environment at the Indie Games Conference in Eugene. InstantAction is what first attracted Diller to GarageGames and promises to deliver all the shoot-’em-up action of games played on consoles, such as the latest iterations of Xbox and Playstation, but with the convenience of being run through your Web browser.
GarageGames’ CEO, the fresh-faced Josh Williams, assures his fellow gamers in a blog post that the deal with IAC is very much in line with his philosophies. “IAC has acquired a majority of the equity at GG,” Williams writes. “However, we used a very unique structure in our deal with them. While IAC now has the majority of the future economic value of GG, we continue to run the shop right here in good old Eugene, Oregon.”
CHRISTINA WILLIAMS
| MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS | ||||
| ANNOUNCED | EXP. CLOSE | BUYER/PARENT (HQ) | SELLER (HQ) / PARENT | PRICE (TERMS) |
| Aug. 30 | Q3 ’07 | CNET (CA) | VersionTracker (Portland) | ND |
| Sept. 10 | Q3 ’07 | RadiSys (Hillsboro) | modular communications platforms business /Intel (CA) | $31.75m (cash) |
| Sept. 14 | Q1 ’08 | FLIR Systems (Portland) | Cedip Infrared Systems (France) | $86.4m (cash) |
| Sept. 18 | Q3 ’07 | IAC (NY) | GarageGames (Eugene) | ND |
| REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS | |||
| ANNOUNCED | BUYER/PARENT (HQ) | REAL ESTATE (LOCATION) / SELLER (HQ) | PRICE |
| Sept. 5 | 3D Investments | Oregon City Shopping Center (Oregon City)/ Kimco Realty | $30.5m |
| Sept. 12 | Holland Partners (WA) | Stoneridge at Cornell (Portland)/ Fairfield Residential LLC | $21.13m |
| Sept. 19 | Wilson Meany Sullivan (CA) | Stonesthrow Apartments (Tualatin)/ Acacia Capital | $27.5m |
| Sept. 19 | Donnelly Museum Building LLC | office building (Portland)/ Abernathy Partners | $1.3m |
| Sept. 20 | LaCamas LLC | LaCamas Center (WA)/ H&O Properties GP | $10.5m |
| Sept. 20 | Westbridge Properties (CA) | Glen at Burnt Bridge Creek (WA)/ Brandt Management Group; Janet McCulloch Trust | $15m |
| Sept. 24 | Green Leaves Healthcare Pharmacy (CA) | Walgreens (Portland)/ Eagle Children’s Trust | $5.4m |
| Sept. 26 | Chadell II LLC | office building (Beaverton)/ McClusky Petruzelli Skourtes LLC | $2.15m |
| Sept. 26 | LRS Architects | office condo (Portland)/ Winkler Development | $7.31m |
| Sept. 26 | MDRI Properties LLC | 14.2 acres (Portland)/ Ferguson Enterprises | $3.6m |
| Sept. 27 | Davais Properties LLC | industrial property (Hillsboro)/ Jan Eric Nordmo | $2.08m |
| Sept. 27 | G&Rays LLC | Ray’s Food Place building (Eugene)/ Arthur C. Piculell Jr. & Dee W. Piculell | $9m |
| Sept. 27 | Amax LLC | America’s Best Inn (Aloha)/ American Hospitality Investments LLC | $2.61m |
| Sept. 28 | Nearside LLC | retail building (Portland)/ 23rd & Kearney Street LLC | $2.65m |
| CAPITAL RAISING | ||||
| ANNOUNCED | COMPANY (HQ) / LEADERSHIP | INVESTOR | PRICE (TERMS) | |
| Sept. 7 | Bioject Medical Technologies (Portland)/ Jerald S. Cobbs, chairman | Partners for Growth | $500,000 (term loan + warrants) | |
| Sept. 7 | Umpqua Holdings (Portland)/ Raymond P. Davis, CEO | statutory trust/LaSalle Bank | $20m (private placement) | |
| Sept. 17 | Oregon Community Health Information Network (Portland)/ Abby Sears, CEO | U.S. Department of Human Services | $4m (federal grants) | |
| Sept. 11 | Tillamook Bay Community College (Tillamook)/ Jon Carnahan, president | public bond offering | $9.86m (general obligation bonds) | |
| Sept. 17 | Southwestern Oregon Community College (Coos Bay)/Judith M.L. Hansen, president | public bond offering | $9.99m (full faith & credit obligations) | |
| Sept. 26 | University of Oregon (Eugene)/ Dave Frohnmayer, president | NSF & Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute | $480,000 (grant) | |
| Sept. 28 | Virogenomics (Tigard)/ Adolph J. Ferro, CEO | National Institute of Standards and Technology | $1.9m (grant ) | |
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