Getty Images, the U.S.-British visual media company and image provider, has rejected a $4 billion takeover by Trillium Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm, saying the bid is not “sufficiently credible”, according to PetaPixel.
Trillium CEO Scott Murray recently said Reuters that the offer was “genuine” but declined to explain who or what would fund the deal, citing “deep connections” within the private equity industry that would help facilitate the deal. Trillium publicly announced a non-binding proposal earlier this week to acquire Getty Images for $10 per share in cash, saying the entity already owned “hundreds of thousands” of Getty shares, despite omitting details on the actual position of the company in Getty. Had the takeover been successful, Murray could have become chairman of the board of directors of Getty Images.
Trillium also refused to share the value of the assets it manages, further fueling Getty’s skepticism over the deal. Getty Images went public in 2022 after 15 years as a private company. As news of the proposed acquisition hit the market, Getty Image’s stock price rose from around $5 to $7, but it has fallen at around $6 since the takeover failed.
“Trillium Capital has not provided the Getty Images board of directors or its advisors with any evidence that it, its managing partner, or its non-binding, highly conditional proposal is sufficiently credible to warrant the board’s engagement. of Getty Images,” Getty representatives said. in a report.
Getty Images, which has a library of nearly 500 million assets, was founded in 1995 by Mark Getty, the youngest son of John Paul Getty, Jr.descendant of the dynastic oil family behind the Getty Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Instituteamong other arts organizations.
Getty Images is currently continue Stability AImaker of the Stable Diffusion artificial intelligence powered text-to-image generator, for copyright infringement.
