Report: Media M&A in Q1 2011 Surpasses All Individual Quarters in 2010

After a disappointing fourth quarter of 2010 (with $2.4 billion in transaction value) in the media industry, investment bank Berkery Noyes reports an upswing for first quarter 2011, to the tune of $13.8 billion in transactions.

Berkery Noyes identified the largest transaction in the first quarter of 2011 as West Australian Newspapers Limited acquisition of Seven Media Group. Seven Media was bought for $4.15 billion.

Berkery Noyes notes that AOL Inc. and WebMediaBrands, Inc. were the most "active inquirers" in the first period of 2011. AOL accounted for four transactions, including About.me, Inc., Outside.in, The Huffington Post and GoViral. WebMediaBrands Inc. also had four transactions: Twittercism, SemanticOverflow.com, FacebookMarketing.de and European Semantic Technology Conference.

With Huffington Post leading the pack with a $315 million price tag, nine blogs were bought and sold in 2011's first quarter. 2011 Q1's group is already at 40 percent of the total blog transactions in 2010, which capped at 22 purchases by year's end.

The first quarter of 2011 closed with 214 acquisition transactions, according to the report. The total value of transactions for 2010 totaled $28.6 billion.

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