Europe’s largest publisher Axel Springer to buy SeLoger for $629 million

Axel Springer AG, Europe's largest multimedia company yesterday said that it will launch a $629 million (€566 million) public offer to buy all the shares of SeLoger.com SA, a operator of property classifieds portals in France.

Founded in 1992, Paris-based SeLoger operates six property online portals including  seloger.com and immostreet.com. It has a portfolio of 1.1 million online property advertisements, a reach of 3.1 million unique users and 14.1 million visits per month.

SeLoger has an extensive network among property agents, who act as intermediaries in the French property market. About 80 per cent of the property agents in the Paris metro region and 55 per cent of the property agents in the other French regions use SeLoger's portals.

By the end of June 2010, SeLoger had increased the number of property agent customers by 7 per cent compared to the previous year and had posted revenues of €73 million last year.

Berlin-based Axel Springer, publisher of Europe's best-selling tabloid Bild said that it has already agreed to buy 12.4 per cent stake in SeLoger from a group of shareholders including the founders Amal Amar and Denys Chalumeau for €34 per share in cash or around €70 million ($90 million).

It now intends to launch a voluntary public offer for the remaining 14,584,376 outstanding shares of SeLoger at €34.00 per share in cash or €496 million ($629 million), representing a premium of 13.3 per cent of SeLoger's closing price of €30 on 9 September 2010.