Online travel website Expedia agrees to invest heavily in rivals

On February 13, according to Bloomberg, online travel website Expedia, the first Chinese internet company to be acquired by the company, said in Thursday it had agreed to buy rival Orbitz CSM at $1.34 billion trillion, or $12 per share. All acquisitions will be done in cash.

Expedia has invested heavily in the purchase of consumer tourism and business-to-business travel websites, Oribtz to further optimize resources to better match the Priceline of larger rivals. Expedia's total reservation last year was 50.4 billion dollars, compared to $12.4 billion Orbitz. Priceline has not yet released its full-year results last year, but the company's cumulative reservation for the first 9 months was $39.6 billion, above Expedia's 39.1 billion dollar level.

Expedia's offer to Orbitz was 25% higher than the Wednesday closing price of the latter stock. In the case of Orbitz liabilities, the total cost of the acquisition amounted to about 1.6 billion dollars. (Lu Xin)