Ten weeks after giving the folk at Trivago a very nice pre-Christmas present, Expedia  has finalised its acquisition of a majority stake in  the European hotel search service.
Expedia will own 61.6% of the company in a deal worth $564 million (based on March 8 exchange rates – approximately Euro 434 million).
The deal was announced on December 21, just six weeks after rival online travel agency group Priceline splashed out $1.8 billion on US travel search giant Kayak.
Expedia will issue a total of 875,200 shares of common stock of umbrella company Expedia Inc over the course of the next five years as part of the deal.
Similar to previous Expedia acquisitions (Hotels.com, TripAdvisor, Venere and eLong), Trivago will remain as a brand in its own right and run independently from its headquarters in Düsseldorf in Germany.
Expedia also no longer has to worry about regulators (in the UK at least) eyeing the deal (although it was always unlikely to have an material affect as Trivago has only a small presence in the UK).
The Office of Fair Trading launched its inquiry in late-February this year but dropped the probe last week.
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