Vodafone offers to acquire Wayfinder

Vodafone Europe B.V. has announced a public offer to the shareholders in Swedish company Wayfinder to tender all outstanding shares in Wayfinder to Vodafone, at SEK 12.00 in cash per share in Wayfinder.

Wayfinder supplies of location and navigation services for mobile phones. Its portfolio of location applications includes the flagship product, Wayfinder Navigator as well as other products such as Wayfinder Earth, Wayfinder Access, and the new Wayfinder Active.

All of the above services are available in 19 languages to a base of unique users that now exceeds 2 million global users.

Clients and partners include the mobile phone manufacturers Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Blackberry (RIM), as well as the mobile phone operators Airtel, Telenor, Telefonica, Vodafone, O2, AT&T, Orange, A1 Mobilkom Austria, 3, SFR and Tele2. The family of partners also includes strategic content providers such as Tele Atlas, Navteq, MapmyIndia, Dmapas and Wcities.

The acceptance period of the Offer is expected to begin as soon as possible following the registration of the offer document with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and will run for approximately three weeks. Vodafone has reserved the right to extend the acceptance period.

The offer document is expected to be registered in the beginning of January 2009. The Offer is, amongst other conditions, conditional upon being accepted to the extent that Vodafone becomes the owner of more than 90 per cent of the total number of shares in Wayfinder.

Vodafone has offered key employees of Wayfinder a separate bonus plan, a so called retention arrangement, that is conditional on the Offer completing and those employees remaining with Wayfinder for a certain time period following completion of the Offer.