DMGT expands online job division with two acquisitions

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Friday 26 August 2005

Top Consultant and Office Recruit join fast-growing portfolio of recruitment sites.

Associated New Ventures (ANV), a division of Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) the publishers of the Daily Mail, today (Thursday) announced it has acquired both Zambeasy Ltd, the publisher of Top-Consultant.com and Office Recruit Ltd. the publisher of officerecruit.co.uk. The two deals have a combined price of £4.1m, including estimated earn-out payments.

Top-Consultant.com is the number one UK recruitment site for management consultants. Officerecruit.co.uk publishes classified listings of vacancies for secretaries, administrators, customer service and telesales, accounts and legal clerks.

These two acquisitions follow the acquisition of Jobsite by DMGT in March 2004 for £35m.

In recent months, Jobsite has launched three new niche sites for the pharmaceutical sector (emedcareers.co.uk), for secretarial vacancies (secrecruit.co.uk) and for jobs in Scotland (scotrecruit).

Andrew Hart, managing director, ANV, commented: “In the last year we’ve seen Jobsite go from strength to strength and it was our aim to find related profitable companies to sit within Jobsite as part of an expanding Jobs division. Top Consultant and Office Recruit both present us with unique opportunities to realise this goal. We’ve watched both companies and have been impressed by their management teams and the sites’ potential.”

Keith Potts, Managing Director of Jobsite said: “Online recruitment is a flourishing and profitable market. These acquisitions fit well with our strategy to build specialist vertical sites which complement Jobsite’s strengths.”

Both businesses will continue to be run by their current management teams as stand-alone operations. Their sites will retain their brand names and strengthen Jobsite’s offering, providing a one-stop shop for recruiters and job hunters.

Enquiries:
Peter Williams, Finance Director, DMGT 020 7938 6631
Andrew Hart, Managing Director, ANV 020 7927 8675
Andrew Honnor, Tulchan 020 7353 4200