My Tangent – Ancestry.com is Acquired By Permira for $1.6B

Good Day,

And now that I am back, it is time to catch up and continue my search and research into the genealogy of my Family Lines and Ancestry.

But...I wonder how the acquisition of Ancestry.com by the European private equity firm Permira Funds will affect the subscription service I pay for, positively and negatively?

According to Ancestry.com “there will be no anticipated changes in its operating structure with this deal. The company will remain in Provo, Utah, and it will continue to focus on investing in content, technology and expanding product offerings…” The key word, of course, is “anticipated”…

Permira is “a European private equity firm with global reach… specializes in five sectors: Consumer, Financial Services, Healthcare, Industrials and TMT (Technology, Media, Telecommunications). There are currently, according to Wikepedia, 25 companies in the Permira funds’protfolio…” This could mean that Ancestry.com could now become only 4% of the focus of Permira’s controlling management team of Kurt Björklund and Tom Lister.

And what does this mean to me, a genealogy researcher, who pays for the Ancestry.com subscription service? Time will only tell.

Check out this article from Bloomberg.com, dated 25 February 2011. The question is how, is Ancestry.com strictly perceived now as a potential investment, or an investment in the lives of our ancestors’’ descendants? Again I repeat, only time will tell.

Enjoy,

Jim