AOL wants to buy Huffington Post
Internet provider AOL wants to buy the Huffington Post for 315 million dollars. The online newspaper was founded in 2005 with just one million dollars in start-up capital and is now one of the most visited websites in the USA with almost 25 million visitors per month.
As AOL announced on Monday, the company intends to pay around 300 million dollars in cash. The purchase would be AOL's largest acquisition since the merger with Time Warner in 2009. The left-leaning co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online newspaper, Arianna Huffington, is to become editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, under which all Huffington Post and AOL content will be united. AOL's news sites, including Politics Daily and Daily Finance, are likely to disappear once the deal is finalized, according to a report in the New York Times, which cites informed sources. The majority of the editors will then write for the Huffington Post.
The top management of the newspaper and AOL have already approved the transaction, and the newspaper's shareholders have also agreed. The purchase is expected to take place at the end of the first or beginning of the second quarter of 2011. Although the Huffington Post is privately owned, the transaction must be approved by the US government.
