Aptos, California-based Fractal Design Inc, which last year acquired Ray Dream Inc, is itself to be acquired by MetaTools Inc, Carpinteria, California in a share exchange that will create a $65.2m-a-year graphics tools company. MetaTools will pay each Fractal shareholder 0.749 of a new share for each Fractal held, and at 14.3m shares outstanding on a fully-diluted basis, that puts an indicated value of $160.7m on the transaction. The combined company will offer products and technologies for visual computing markets, including consumer and professional photography and video, digital imaging, animation, computer graphics, three-dimensional and data visualization.
