Mail.ru Group, a leading, LSE-listed Russian Internet group, is to sell 100% of shares in HeadHunter (hh.ru) to a consortium of investors led by direct investment fund Elbrus Capital.
The deal, which is worth a total of 9.85 billion rubles (a little less than $210 million at the current exchange rate), is still “subject to third-party approval,” the group announced. It expected to be completed in Q1 2015.
HeadHunter is a leading Russian jobs and recruitment site, founded in 2000 under the name ‘National Job Club’. In 2007 Yuri Milner’s Digital Sky Technologies bought a 24.5% stake in HeadHunter for $15 million, followed by a further 12% the following year.
In 2009 DST bought another 56.61% in the company for $37.5 million, before becoming Mail.ru Group in 2010, who went on to increase its stake in HeadHunter to 100% in 2012.
According to Mail.ru Group, the HeadHunter’s site ‘hh.ru’ receives 14 million unique visitors per month, and currently holds 15 million CVs, over 300,000 vacancies and is used by 420,000 companies.
According to Superjob CEO Alexey Zakharov, the company remains profitable, though it has suffered as a result of the current economic climate, in which the jobs market is showing little growth and there are few new vacancies.
Mail.ru Group recently spent a large part of its available cash on the acquisition of a 48% stake in Vkontakte, thus becoming the sole shareholder of Russia’s leading social leading network.
Source: Mail.ru Group, RusBase.vc, Vedomosti.ru
