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Yahoo sells shopping site Kelkoo

Published: 25 Nov 2008 08:26 GMT

Yahoo has sold European shopping and price-comparison site Kelkoo to a UK-based private-equity firm.

A Yahoo spokeswoman confirmed to ZDNet UK sister site silicon.com that Jamplant completed the acquisition of the company on Friday.

Yahoo bought Kelkoo in 2004 for €475m (£405m), as it looked to expand its presence outside the US.

Although Yahoo gave no information about the reasons for the sale, it referred to Kelkoo as a non-strategic business, suggesting it no longer fitted in with the company's future direction.

Yahoo has not put a figure on Kelkoo's sale price but, according to former Kelkoo chief executive Pierre Chappaz's blog, the amount was under €100m.

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"Kelkoo has found its freedom once again and I'm very happy about it for my numerous friends in Grenoble, Paris, London and in various other capitals (Kelkoo currently employs 270 people). Innovation ought not to be slow to come back and already, in Britain, Kelkoo has just opened a cashback service. I'd bet that a similar opening in France is imminent... In terms of other projects, there's also talk of a US launch... We'll see. In any event, things are happening," Chappaz wrote.

Yahoo is currently looking for a new chief executive after Jerry Yang announced that he was to step down from the role after 18 months at the helm.

He will assume the position of 'chief Yahoo', the role he held before taking over from former chief executive Terry Semel in 2007.

Yang's departure led to speculation that an acquisition by Microsoft might be back on the cards, but Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer reiterated last week that his company has "moved on" from February's $44.6bn (£29.4bn) bid for Yahoo.

Credit: Yahoo! ditches Kelkoo from silicon.com