RSS #001: My good friend Gilles Babinet, founder & chairman of Musiwave, sells out for over 100m euros to a public company [French]

In my recap post about the great stuff that happened to me in 2004, I mentionned a number of great people I’ve met and become good friends with. One of those persons is Gilles Babinet, a serial entrepreneur, founder & chairman of his third company, Musiwave.

I’ve posted about him a couple of times in the past year, not only because I really enjoy the man, but also because he was up building a great business. Here you see him for instance with Steve Forbes, at the 3GSM convention in Cannes early this year, or even in his living room .

Well, I had a chat with him on Saturday evening, and I’ve posted a quick & dirty hack above so that you can hear about his mood ONE HOUR BEFORE CLOSING THE DEAL. As you will see in the above video, he’s indeed in a very good mood. The Flash player is still rough, the video is in French, and I haven’t edited the video yet (I’m sorry about that, will try to do better next time…).

Now, the official news came on Yahoo! biz this morning, and press releases were prepared by the great Colette Ballou of BallouPR, available both on the official sites of Musiwave and Openwave (the acquirer).

The gist is :

“ Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Openwave will acquire all outstanding shares of Musiwave for a total purchase price of approximately €99.5 million and a contingent earnout of up to an additional €15 million. This equates to approximately $121 million, and an additional $18 million respectively, based on the Euro-US Dollar exchange rate of September 23, 2005. The actual amount of the contingent earnout payment, if any, will be determined based upon achievement of certain financial targets by the Musiwave business during calendar year 2006, and will be paid, if applicable, shortly thereafter. The purchase price is expected to be paid with a mixture of cash and stock, with the exact proportions to be determined by Openwave prior to the closing. The payments will consist of at least forty percent (40%) cash. ”

Update: Note - Just for reference, the video was shot in Paris, France on Saturday 24th September, slightly after 9pm.