Trinity Mirror linked with £50m web recruitment group

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 22-Aug-05, 09:00

LONDON – Trinity Mirror has been tipped to extend its string of digital acquisitions with the £50m purchase of recruitment agency Hot Group, which owns general job site Workthing.com as well a number of specialist recruitment businesses.

Hot Group, which operates traditional bricks and mortar recruitment businesses alongside its websites, made a turnover of more than £43m in 2004, of which £36.6m was from its traditional business and £6.5m was from online. However, the profits split was closer to two thirds for traditional to one third for online.

Hot Group was founded in 1999 and has grown by making several acquisitions, most recently Workthing.com from Guardian Media Group for £6.7m. Its other sites include Hotrecruit.com, Planetrecruit.com and Jobsfinancial.com.

The acquistion would mark the third in as many weeks for the Daily Mirror-owner.

Last week Trinity Mirror bought the owner of financial recruitment site Gaapweb.com for an initial £10.5m and a further performance-related £2.6m. In July it bought property website Smartnewhomes.com for an initial £11.3m and a further performance-related £5.3m.

It has also launched its own local recruitment sites and in the autumn is planning to relaunch the websites of national newspapers the Sunday Mirror and The People as well as Scottish titles The Daily Record and The Sunday Mail.

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