After weeks – no, MONTHS – of rumor surrounding the possible buyout of Ancestry.com and ongoing negotiations, the company finally announced that it will be acquired for $1.6 billion, or $32 per share by Permira, a European private-equity firm.
Permira will focus on expanding the customer base into Western Europe and will expand Ancestry.com’s use of technologies, archives and collections, and customer base.
Ancestry.com currently has over two million paid subscribers, at present mostly in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.
Other recent deals aimed at increasing information and services available to subscribers included the purchase of Archives.com for approximately $100 million and the more recent purchase of 1000memories Inc., an online resource for photo digitization.

