(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Since June, when German mobile carrier Freenet AG (www.freenet.ag) announced it would be selling its web hosting division Strato (www.strato.eu), German investment bank Warburg Pincus (www.warburgpincus.com) and private equity firm Bridgepoint (www.bridgepoint.eu) have added themselves to a long list of companies vying for Strato, one of Europe’s largest web hosts.
With an estimated price of €300 million ($440 million), according to a Financial News Online report, two German firms are now interested in buying the Strato hosting division from Germany’s third-biggest telco, Freenet.
The sale of Strato is part of Freenet’s strategy to focus on mobile services. Less than a month after Freenet announced Strato was for sale in early June, French hosting provider OVH (www.ovh.com) had entered the race to acquire Strato. Deutsche Telekom (www.deutschetelekom.com) and United Internet (www.united-internet.de) are also reportedly interested in Strato.
Freenet has already sold its broadband business to United Internet, which may make it ineligible to buy Strato because of competition regulators that would not look kindly on it holding a possible 80 percent of the European web hosting market with the acquisition of Strato.
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