Lycos Europe buys out Multimania

It was the last French independent biggest website in Europe. Multimania, like Respublica.fr which was bought by LibertySurf last year, is bought by a biggest website too, Lycos Europe. The giant portal, subsidiary of the Iberian-American Terra-Lycos and of the German Bertelsmann, had previously bought the Swedish Spray, who had acquired Caramail itself... a real food chain. Multimania doesn't need to complain: the acquisition is made by an exchange of shares and the company created by Michel Meyer, which is quoted on Paris new market, was valued at 222 million euros (about 1.5 billion francs). The share is switched at approximately 10% above the value of its last closing quotation. In Europe, Lycos with Multimania will reach 1.1 billion pages visited per month. In France, Lycos and associates are ranked 3rd (Lycos only was tenth and Multimania, seventh).