News

SMO, NetBooth cancel merger plans

August 4, 2002

BELLINGHAM, Wash. -- A planned merger between shopping mall-airport kiosk developer SMO Multimedia Corp. (Pink Sheets:SMOC) and kiosk service provider NetBooth Corp. has been canceled, SMO officials announced on Aug. 2.

When the merger was announced in early April (See story: SMO, NetBooth close in on merger), SMO officials said the deal would eliminate deployment issues regarding the company's product line, which has yet to be rolled out in a major deployment.

But in canceling the deal, SMO officials said recent developments have made the merger agreement moot.

"The recent successes for both companies have been considerable and both parties feel that working together in joint ventures would create a better and more powerful alliance for the kiosk industry," the company stated in a news release.

SMO announced in May that it had reached an agreement to provide unspecified development services for petroleum technology company PetroSync Inc. (See story: SMO taps into petroleum market), but have announced no further plans beyond that deal.

No financial details on the merger were disclosed when the agreement was originally announced. NetBooth is a privately held company based in Las Vegas.

In other news, SMO announced that Canadian businessman James Janz has been named to the company's advisory board. A former schoolteacher, Janz has been active in the business world for nearly four decades, according to SMO officials.