Trinity Buys Online Recruitment Site

Newspaper publisher, Trinity Mirror, has acquired online recruitment services provider, the hotgroup, for £50.5 million, 20.25 pence per hotgroup share.

The deal follows recent purchases by Trinity of GAAPweb.com and Smartnewhomes.com and will further enhance the publishers classified recruitment offering and improve its service to advertisers.

Commenting on the acquisition, Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror said: “We see exciting opportunities for the management and continued development of the hot group alongside our existing recruitment advertising businesses.”

The purchase of the hotgroup is in line with Trinity’s strategy of growing its core classified franchises, both on and off line, with the publishers saying the deal will “bring together one of the UK’s leading recruitment groups and largest media organisations to create a powerful new force in recruitment.”

Tony Reeves, chairman and chief executive of the hotgroup added: “Assuming completion of the offer, the hotgroup will become an integral part of Trinity Mirror and will benefit from the enhanced financial strength to continue developing the business.”

The hotgroup comprises both online and traditional recruitment businesses, with its online division the UK’s second largest online recruitment business in terms of traffic, attracting over 1m unique users.

It operates as a network of sites including workthing.com, planetrecruit, jobsfinancial and hotrecruit, which together typically carry between 30,000 and 40,000 job vacancies. In addition, the network has over 2m registered users and around 1m searchable CVs.

Trinity Mirror recently reported that it had increased its group revenue by 1.2% during the first six months of 2005, despite contending with a difficult advertising market, reflecting the slowdown of the UK economy since the beginning of the year.

In its interim results published in July, the Group revealed operating profit to be up 7.9% year on year, with operating cash flows up by 2% to £129.9 million, and stable net debt at £457.4 million.

Trinity Mirror: 020 7293 3000www.trinitymirror.com