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To: Sowbug who wrote (7775)	3/4/1998 5:55:00 AM
From: Frost Byte	Respond to of 27307

3/3/98 - MSNBC: TAKEOVERS/MEDIA ALLIANCES TO COME LYCOS, ACTING on behalf of CMG, has hired investment bank Wasserstein Perella to handle the transaction. CMG is seeking to align Lycos with a major media company in a deal that Wetherell estimated could be worth $80 million. Wetherell said the goal for Lycos is to find a strategic partner that could bolster its content and could also benefit from receiving some of Lycos' traffic. "We may or may not do something," Wetherell said, "it's got to be a strategic fit." Wetherell said talks with "every major media company you can think of" have been ongoing for about two weeks. He declined to name the other parties to the talks but said there was a great deal of interest from major media companies in making an investment. He added that the buyer could get a seat on Lycos' board of directors. Wetherell made the comments at plaNET.wall.street, an Internet investment conference sponsored by investment bank Hambrecht & Quist. If a transaction happens, industry observers say it could spur other combinations of search engines and major media companies. Indeed, the stock of search engine Infoseek, the fourth-most visited search site after No. 3 Lycos, surged last fall on rumors of merger talks with Time Warner. So far, the only major investments by leading media companies in search engines have been Softbank Corp.'s early investment in Yahoo!, the top search engine, and America Online's more than 10 percent stake in No. 2 search engine Excite. Experts say it could make sense for more traditional media companies to align with search engines. Search sites are among the most trafficked areas on the Internet. But increasingly they are driving traffic as acting as "Web portals" that supply information and content in addition to search services. Many major media companies, in turn, have struggled to build anything close to the dominant share of readership or viewership in cyberspace that they enjoy in the physical world. A deal involving Lycos "could spur interest from both sides" - traditional media and search engine companies, said Paul Noglows, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist.