France Telecom is in exclusive talks to buy a 49% stake in Dailymotion, a France-based video-sharing website, for €58.8m ($80.5m).
Investors in Dailymotion since its launch in 2005, include venture capital firms Atlas Ventures, Advent Ventures, IDInvest Partners and Partech and France’s sovereign wealth fund FSI. Having provided $68.5m over this period, the investors will sell a portion of their shares to France Telecom.
France Telecom through its Orange mobile phone subsidiary can increase its stake to 100% from 2013. Google paid $1.6bn (£1bn) for video sharing peer YouTube in 2006.
Stéphane Richard, chief executive of France Telecom-Orange, said: "This operation once again illustrates the role Orange intends to play in the content value chain. Although we are no longer publishers ourselves, we are strengthening our position in the fields of aggregation and distribution. We will provide our customers with an enriched and innovative video offer combining Dailymotion’s know-how and diversity of content with the quality of our networks across all connected screens."
Last year, France Telecom used its corporate venturing unit Innovacom to buy an 11% stake in music-streaming site Deezer.