AOL closes Huffington Post acquisition
After announcing a deal to buy Huffington Post last month, AOL says the deal is now closed. The newly formed Huffington Post Media Group will be lead by Arianna Huffington.
The deal is done.
AOL announced today that it has closed its $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post. AOL has integrated the Huffington Post with AOL Media and AOL Local to create the Huffington Post Media Group, the company said. That group will be led by Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, who will serve as president and editor-in-chief.
AOL announced its deal to acquire the Huffington Post a month ago. Huffington said at the time that the acquisition will help AOL become "one of the largest destinations for smart content and community on the Internet."
AOL has used a string of acquisitions to try to re-establish its position as a major Web media company. In 2005, the company announced the acquisition of Weblogs Inc., which included the Engadget tech news site, among many other sites. Last year, it acquired TechCrunch tech news site for an undisclosed sum. The Huffington Post, which claims to have 25 million unique monthly visitors, is now the crown jewel in that media mix.
But that doesn't mean there might not be personnel changes afoot.
Last week, All Things Digital reported that AOL would be laying off employees soon. The publication's sources couldn't confirm a date or number of layoffs, but said they are "imminent." Those rumors followed a statement by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong at the PaidContent conference in New York last week, who said that the acquisition will lead to some "job changes."
Potential layoffs aside, the newly formed Huffington Post Media Group is quite big. AOL said the combined company will have 117 million unique visitors each month in the U.S. and 253 million a month worldwide.