Sweden Family History Soon to be Part of Ancestry.com

The following press release caught my attention.  Since I spend so much time searching in Sweden, I find this of immense interest.  Perhaps, you will as well.

Ancestry.com to Acquire Sweden's Genline.se

Leading Swedish Family History website

26 million pages of family history records, 16th-20th century


Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM), the world’s largest online family history resource, today announced that it has agreed to acquire the leading Swedish family history website Genline.se.
Total consideration for Genline is approximately US $6.7 million, to be paid in cash at closing. The offer has been accepted by Genline’s Board of Directors but remains subject to approval of Genline Holding AB’s public shareholders and other ordinary course closing conditions.

Genline expects to provide proxy materials to shareholders immediately and hold a Special Meeting of Stockholders shortly to vote on the transaction. Genline trades on the Stockholm exchange AktiTorget under the ticker symbol GENL.

Upon completion of the transaction, Genline will join Ancestry.com’s family of nine web properties globally, which together serve more than 1.2 million subscribers and host over five billion historical records and 17 million family trees containing 1.7 billion profiles.

Genline currently has more than 17,000 paying members with access to 26 million pages of digitized Swedish church records spanning more than 400 years from the 16th to the 20th century.

Josh Hanna, SVP and General Manager, International, Ancestry.com Inc., comments: “The Genline.se transaction, our first international acquisition, represents an exciting opportunity for Ancestry.com to access Sweden’s avid family history community and to provide Ancestry.com subscribers of Swedish heritage in the U.S. and other markets with access to important historical content.

"For Genline members, the millions of US and Canadian records with Swedish relevance will provide many new opportunities to discover North American ancestors."

Mikko Ollinen, Genline AB Managing Director, comments: "We are delighted that Ancestry.com sees the potential of Genline. Together we look forward to continuing to grow our business in Sweden and to making new and exciting historical records, both local and international, available to our members."

Ancestry.com expects to acquire all shares of Genline AB for approximately 53 million Swedish kronor with an adjustment for net working capital. Based on a June 11, 2010 exchange rate of SEK7.94 to US$1.00, the net purchase amount approximates US$6.7 million
Genline’s 2009 reported revenue was $2.4 million. Ancestry.com does not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its financial guidance as issued in connection with its first quarter earnings release on April 29, 2010.

Forward-looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or to future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "appears," "may," "designed," "expect," "intend," "focus," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "should," or "continue" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements include statements describing our subscriber base, our activities to enhance subscribers' experience and our business outlook. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that are, in some cases, beyond our control and that could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements.
Factors that could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements, and our ability to execute on our business strategy include those listed under the caption "Risk Factors" of the Ancestry.com Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009.
We assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.