Lycos rumored to be sizing up 33% stake in Interia portal

Shares of internet portal Interia owned by Comarch and radio RMF FM will probably be bought by US internet portal Lycos. It is likely the company has already made a preliminary offer for a stake in the Polish portal. It is yet unknown if the stake will be larger than the 33% Comarch and RMF FM decided to sell. "Gaining such a strong investor for the Polish company would be a success," said Maria Szafranska-Skowron from CDM Pekao. Lycos values the Polish company at $40 million and the owners of the portal said they would be satisfied with a sum between $50 million-$150 million. It is hard to say if the US portal is right about valuation of the Polish portal. There is no research of the internet in Poland, which would allow an estimate of the number of users. Real use of the internet in Poland is still too small to make Polish services important for Western companies. "The Polish market is very interesting for American companies, but they will enter our market rather later than earlier," said Poland.com head Krzysztof Jasiak. (Puls Biznesu, page 1, 4)