LONDON, May 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Getty Images, the leading creator and distributor of visual content and other media, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sydney-based Photolibrary, a leading provider of creative stills imagery. The acquisition will benefit existing and potential customers, by making even more high quality and relevant imagery easily accessible to customers all over the world.

Photolibrary brings to Getty Images a broad range of versatile content, with regional as well as global appeal, including renowned collections such as Peter Arnold and Oxford Scientific. By combining both companies’ imagery collections and strong relationships with valuable partners, the acquisition will provide customers around the world with greater choice and more easily accessible imagery. Photolibrary’s content will be licensed through Getty Images’ global distribution platform, which enables search in local languages and single image purchases in local currencies.

Additionally, Photolibrary’s established presence in India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia will make it possible for Getty Images to expand its products and services to customers in those regions. Furthermore, the addition of Photolibrary’s imagery collections will allow Getty Images to create new products and services, to better serve customers around the region and across the globe.

“As worldwide demand for imagery across multiple channels and platforms continues to increase, we are delighted to offer Photolibrary’s content to our customers,” said Jonathan Klein, Getty Images’ co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “The need for both local and global content remains strong across South East Asia, as the region continues to develop and grow. This acquisition will further enhance our ability to better serve customers in the region and around the world, with a greater choice of content.”

Glenn Parker, Group CEO Photolibrary added: “This acquisition is a testament to Photolibrary’s content and global presence. Getty Images will build upon our complementary geographic presence, expand the reach for Photolibrary imagery into new markets and improve the experience for our collective customers.”

About Getty Images
Getty Images is one of the world’s leading creators and distributors of still imagery, footage and multimedia products, as well as a recognized provider of other forms of premium digital content, including music. Getty Images serves business customers in more than 100 countries and is the first place creative and media professionals turn to discover purchase and manage images and other digital content. Its award-winning photographers and imagery help customers produce inspiring work which appears every day in the world’s most influential newspapers, magazines, advertising campaigns, films, television programs, books and websites. Visit Getty Images at www.gettyimages.com to learn more about how the company is advancing the unique role of digital media in communications and business, and enabling creative ideas to come to life.

Getty Images has made a definitive agreement to buy-out Jupiterimages from Jupitermedia for $96 million in cash.  The Jupiterimages brand and website will be integrated into Getty Images.  

“The digital content market is expanding, and the customers of both Getty Images and Jupiterimages will benefit from the combination of these businesses,” stated Jonathan Klein, co-founder/CEO of Getty Images in a press release. “Jupiterimages’ customers already appreciate its value-based offerings, and through this acquisition we will be able to offer more content, better technology, more customer service and additional local content. Combining Jupiterimages’ product with Getty Images’ extensive media assets and global distribution will further enhance Getty Images’ offerings and provide more relevant content to both companies’ customers while extending the presence of the Jupiterimages brand to customers around the world.” 

This acquisition will give Jupitermedia a lot of cash to play around with as their stock price has been declining for the past year.  Back in March 2000, Jupitermedia stock was trading at $56.00 per share.  Now their stock is trading at between $0.70-$1.40 per share.  This gives them a market cap of about $25 million.  What will Jupitermedia do with this sudden infusion of cash?  Pulse 2.0 will report it down the line.

Private equity firm Hellman & Friedman is buying Getty Images for $2.4bn. Getty is one of the largest stock image providers online. Its library contains over 70 million pictures and 30,000 hours of film footage.

Under the terms of the sale agreement, Getty’s stock holders will receive $34.00 in cash for each share of stock they own. The $2.4bn price represents roughly a 50% premium over Getty’s market cap.

Getty’s sale definitely proves that the premium stock photo Industry is alive and well.