Opera shareholders agree to takeover by Chinese investor

More than 90 percent of the shareholders of browser manufacturer Opera have agreed to the takeover by a Chinese investor. Now that that hurdle has been overcome, competition authorities in Norway and China still have to give the green light.

Shareholders responsible for 90.9 percent of the vote have agreed. This means there is enough support among shareholders to allow the takeover to go ahead. The offer for Opera came in February from investor Golden Brick, owner of Qihoo 360, among others, and amounts to a total of more than one billion euros. The management of Opera does not seem to support the takeover, TechCrunch reported earlier.

An important hurdle has been overcome with shareholder acceptance, but the takeover is not yet complete. The competition authorities in both countries of residence have yet to agree. It is unknown whether those authorities have objections to the takeover.

The browser builder has not been idle since the bid. It came with a vpn app for iOS and built a proxy function into the desktop version of its product under the name ‘Browser VPN’.