In two giant steps this week, jobsite Seek has bought its Asian investor/partner and Mexican recruitment site OCC Mundial, without increasing borrowing.
The acquisition of Tiger Global gives it 80.8 per cent of SeekAsia, which owns both the region's leading sites, JobStreet and JobsDB. News Corp Australia owns 12.9 per cent and Australian investment bank Macquarie 3.4 percent.
At OCC Mundial, Seek's stake has been increased to 98.2 per cent with the remainder held by the founder.
"Both businesses are market leaders and reinvesting to capture large market opportunities across jobs and education," Seek chief executive and cofounder Andrew Bassat said. "Seek is excited about continuing to work alongside the strong local management teams and help them capture the large growth opportunities in these markets."
Classified Intelligence Report's Peter Zollman says the transactions are expected to increase earnings per share in FY16 and beyond on a cash basis. Seek (ASX: SEK) has a market capitalisation of A$5.7 billion (about $4.4 billion U.S.). Monster Worldwide, another leading publicly traded recruitment advertising company (NYSE: MWW), has a market cap of $569 million (U.S.).
Seek restructured its management team in March to focus more heavily on its international businesses. Peter Everingham became managing director for Seek International, while retaining responsibility for growth of Seek-Asia and "oversight of all of Seek's employment businesses outside of Australia and New Zealand". Ronnie Fink joined the executive team as corporate development director; Simon Lusted joined the executive team as group strategy director, and Isar Mazer joined the executive team as MD of international operations. Michael Ilczynski became MD of Seek Employment for Aus-tralia and New Zealand.