[Berlin, GERMANY] Deutsche Telekom's Internet service T-Online is taking over Ya.com, the second largest Internet portal in Spain, for approximately Euro 550 million (almost US $490 million) in stocks and cash. As the company announced in Darmstadt today, the acquisition will be completed by this fall. T-Online is currently active in France and Austria and will start-up operations in Switzerland shortly.

The takeover was largely financed through an increase in capital with the issuing of 15.25 million new stocks for Ya.com's stockholders; an additional Euro 100 million (US $89 million) in cash is also to change hands. According to T-Online, the stocks issued are worth approximately Euro 450 million (US $400 million). Four hundred thousand of the 2.3 million registered customers also use Ya.com for Internet access, according to T-Online. Furthermore, Ya.com is also active in Portugal. According to reports in the media, the takeover could allow the German company to not only establish itself in the Spanish market, but also to prepare to expand its business into Latin America.

In the past weeks, T-Online had said that it was not interested in taking over Ya.com. In the previous weeks there had merely been a few conversations. Sources close to the company report that the conversations were interrupted when T-Online's CEO, Wolfgang Keuntje, surprisingly stepped down.