Verizon to buy AOL in $4.4 billion deal

Verizon Communications Inc. said it would buy AOL Inc. in a $4.4 billion deal that gives the biggest U.S. wireless carrier access to AOL's successful digital advertising service and content including the Huffington Post news website.

The offer of $50 per share represents a premium of 17.4 percent to AOL's Monday close of $42.59.

AOL shares traded as high as $50.70 before the opening bell on Tuesday. Verizon shares were down about 1 percent at $49.32.

The deal, which includes about $300 million of AOL debt, will take the form of a tender offer followed by a merger, with AOL becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon.

Verizon said it expects to fund the transaction from cash on hand and debt.

Tim Armstrong, who has spearheaded AOL's transformation into one of the most successful advertising technology companies, will continue to lead the company after the sale.

"When you look at where we are today and where we are going, we have made AOL as big as it can possibly be in today's landscape," Armstrong told CNBC.

"..There is no better partner for us to go forward with than Verizon," he said.

Activist-investor Starboard Value LP had urged Yahoo Inc. to consider a merger with AOL, whose businesses include the TechCrunch blog.

AOL reported a 7.2 percent rise in first-quarter revenue to $625.1 million, boosted by demand for its real-time bidding platform that helps advertisers place video and display ads on other digital properties.

AOL was a technology behemoth in 2000 when it bought Time Warner for more than $160 billion. That deal became a disaster and AOL was spun off from Time Warner in 2009 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange at a value of $3.4 billion.

Verizon has been spending aggressively to expand its business. In February it bought licenses worth $10.4 billion in a government sale of wireless airwaves for mobile data.

LionTree Advisors, Weil Gotshal & Manges and Guggenheim Partners advised Verizon.

AOL's advisers were Allen & Co LLC and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.

Up to Monday's close, AOL's shares had gained 12 percent and Verizon's 3.4 percent in the past 12 months.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Verizon Offers Call Center Solutions

MANILA, Philippines — US communications and technology giant Verizon Communications Inc. has partnered with inContact, the leading provider of cloud contact center solutions, to offer an advanced suite of cloud-based virtual contact center services beginning January 2012.

The innovative offering is expected to enable customers of businesses and government agencies to choose how they want to contact and interact with the organization. Its rich features provide customers an option of speaking with a live agent or requesting a call back if one is not immediately available. Customers could also use the Web for an online chat or to get answers to frequently asked questions.

Other features include:

• Special software that can recognize incoming callers and refer specific customers to agents with the appropriate level of expertise. This “first-call resolution” eliminates the need to transfer a customer from one agent to another, an often lengthy process that frustrates customers.

• Comprehensive agent desktop tools to help educate and prepare agents to field customer inquiries and resolve them quickly.

inContact, which built its Asia-Pacific headquarters at the Bonifacio Global City in the Philippines, provides the world’s largest cloud-based call center solutions, with over 800 call center deployments and is used by more than 60,000 agents globally.

The partnership between Verizon and inContact is expected to help accelerate the adoption of cloud-based customer contact solutions in the Philippines, India and other markets with strong contact center industries. Several technology research firms have already tagged 2012 as the year of cloud solutions.

Verizon, which is present in more than 100 countries including the Philippines, said that since virtual contact center solutions are cloud-based, there is no large upfront capital investment and they can be employed to augment and adjust existing customer service operations to more flexibly address changing business requirements.

Nine of the 10 largest banks in the US and many other world-class businesses rely on Verizon’s contact center solutions to strengthen their customer relationships.

source: mb.com.ph