EBay may surprise Asia with SurfingBananas

SINGAPORE--As its parent company Similan.com goes under the waves, regional online auction site SurfingBananas.com may find itself surfing into eBay.

eBay has been moving into the region, launching a Singapore site in October in addition to sites in Australia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand. It also plans to move into China and Taiwan.

The expansion plans of the world's largest online auctioneer will take a big step forward if it acquires Singapore-based SurfingBananas, which has operations in 10 Asia Pacific countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines.

The Business Times quoted sources as saying that the deal was being wrapped up, and that details of price would be revealed in the coming weeks. --Susan Tsang, Special to ZDNet News