Adobe Systems to buy stock photography company Fotolia for $800 mn
12 Dec 2014
Adobe Systems Inc, the maker of Acrobat and Photoshop software, yesterday struck a deal to buy privately-held stock photography company Fotolia for $800 million.
The deal comes more than a year after the California-based company acquired French digital marketing software company Neolane, for $600 million in cash. (See: Adobe Systems to buy French digital marketing software firm Neolane for $600 mn)
Founded in 2005 by Oleg Tscheltzoff, Patrick Chassany and Thibaud Elziere, Fotolia is a microstock photography agency owned by private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR & Co), TA Associates, and the Fotolia management.
KKR & Co had acquired a 50-per cent stake in Fotolia in 2010 for $150 million.
The New York-based company offers of 34 million of royalty-free images, vectors, graphics and HD videos to professional designers, managers, presenters, small business houses and students.
It sells its images through member credit subscriptions via internet payment providers like PayPal and Moneybookers.
Fotolia currently operates in 23 countries and has websites in 14 languages, and claims to have more than 5 million members.
Adobe's latest acquisition will be used to integrate Fotolia's service into Adobe's Creative Cloud, where Creative Cloud members can buy from Fotolia's stock of over 34 million images and videos.
Adobe Creative Cloud is one of the world's largest marketing technology platforms serving two-thirds of the Fortune 50 companies including 17 out of the top 20 Internet retailers in the US.
''The acquisition of Fotolia will reinforce Creative Cloud's role as the preeminent destination for creatives,'' said David Wadhwani, senior vice president for Digital Media at Adobe. ''Creative Cloud is becoming the go-to marketplace for the creative community to access images, videos, fonts and creative talent, through critical creative services like Fotolia and our new Creative Talent Search capabilities.''
Adobe, the maker of Photoshop and Illustrator design software, plans to continue to operate Fotolia as a stand-alone stock service and will start integrating Fotolia's content into its products after the deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2015.