June 22nd, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
KongZhong Corporation announced that it is to acquire the entire issued share capital of Simlife International, Inc. Upon the closing of the acquisition, Simlife would become a wholly-owned subsidiary of KongZhong.
The Company has agreed to pay US$3 million in cash to the shareholders of Simlife. An additional payment of US$1.25 million in cash and the issuance of $ 6 million of the Company's ordinary shares (equivalent to 150,000 ADSs) to certain shareholders of Simlife are contingent upon Simlife's performance in the year subsequent to completion of the acquisition. IDGVC Partners, which owns approximately 6.7% of the outstanding ordinary shares of the KongZhong, also owns approximately 30% of the issued share capital of Simlife.
"I'm excited to welcome the Simlife team to the Company. Simlife currently has a portfolio of over 200 mobile games and a development team of more than 50 members with years of experience in developing high-quality 3D mobile games. One of Simlife's mobile games, X Dancery, was selected by Nokia in 2009 as a Grand Prize winner in the Technology Showcase category in the global Calling All Innovators contest for mobile applications and solutions. We believe that Simlife's mobile games and development team will be important additions to our own portfolio of mobile games and development team. We also believe that Simlife's strong development capabilities, including its self-developed 3D mobile game engine, can help consolidate and extend the Company's leadership in the Chinese mobile games market." said Leilei Wang, CEO of KongZhong.
