French securities regulator Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) said yesterday that Axel Springer’s bid for seloger.com is valid and gave its approval.
Axel Springer launched a €34 per-share public offer for the French market leading portal in September, however seloger.com rejected the offer, citing its “willingness to prevent any attempt of a creeping takeover of the company.” seloger.com has just reported a 12.6 percent year-on-year increase in revenue to €60.9 million for the third quarter of this year.
Axel Springer submitted its offer, which values seloger.com at €566 million, to AMF on 28 September. The German publisher currently owns 12.4 percent of seloger.com, and says the decision is now solely up to the portal’s shareholders.
“We continue to believe that we can be a valuable shareholder for seloger.com,” says Ralph Büchi, president of Axel Springer International. ”Axel Springer has considerable digital expertise, a reach throughout all major European markets and strong financial capabilities. We will therefore be able to support seloger.com in its further development both in France and abroad, in case the management team of the company should decide to pursue a strategy of internationalisation.”
paidcontent.org points out that Axel Springer has bought a number of overseas digital properties since the summer, including Indian car classifieds portal carwale.com. The company also operates German property portal immonet.de.
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