B. Riley Financial Inc., a Los Angeles-based investment firm that maintains an office in Newport Beach, is buying Internet service provider United Online Inc. for $11 a share, or about $170 million.
The bid is lower than the $12.50 per share B. Riley offered in November. Woodland Hills-based United Online rejected that bid and began looking at its “strategic options,” including a sale.
The deal is expected to close by the end of the third quarter and comes as United Online has begun shedding noncore operations. In the past nine months it has sold three businesses for more than $43 million.
United Online interim Chief Executive Jeff Goldstein said in a statement, “The transaction will allow our remaining operating business, the communications segment, to continue under B. Riley” and buyout United Online investors.
—Mark Madler
