On October 28, 2015, Match.com Canada Ltd., a subsidiary of The Match Group, completed its previously-announced acquisition of Canadian online dating service Plentyoffish Media Inc. (POF) for US$575 million in cash. The Match Group, now adds POF, the largest free online dating site in the world, to its portfolio. Match is a wholly-owned subsidiary of US media and internet giant IAC/InterActiveCorp.
The Match Group was represented in-house by Gregg Winiarski, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Stuart Cawthorn, Vice President, M&A Counsel, of IAC, and by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz LLP in the US and Goodmans LLP in Canada. The Wachtell Lipton team included Andrew Nussbaum, Ante Vucic, Alison Zieske Preiss and Elina Tetelbaum (corporate) and Joseph Larson and Christina Ma (competition); and the Goodmans team included Allan Goodman (corporate), Richard Annan, Michael Koch and Cal Goldman (competition/Investment Canada), Maureen Berry (tax), Susan Garvie (employment), Amalia Berg (IP), John Alton (employee benefits) and Peter Ruby (technology).
McMillan LLP acted as Canadian counsel for POF and advised POF and its founder Markus Frind in POF’s sale. Plentyoffish and Mr. Frind were represented by a McMillan team that included Ryan Black, Tom Theodorakis, Peter Botz, Sandra Knowler, Grant Wong, François Tougas, Doug Pedlow, Mike Reid, Cory Kent, Ryan Gallagher, Christine Man, Lyndsay Wasser, Sasa Pudar, Allie Ketcham, Marina Tran, Scott Kuehn, Rebecca Rock, and Don Mainland.
Venable LLP co-advised Plentyoffish as its US counsel and was represented by Philip von Mehren, Michele Maney, Damien Scott, Charles Kolstad and Andrew Pratt.