Randstad buys jobs website Monster for $429m

Randstad has agreed to pay $429 million (€387 million) for jobs site Monster Worldwide, one of the first ecommerce companies to go public in the 1990s at the dawn of the internet era.

Randstad will acquire Massachusetts-based Monster for $3.40 a share in cash, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. The figure is 23 per cent above Monster’s closing price on Monday. The sale marks the end of the road for a pioneer in internet commerce.

Monster went public in December 1996 when it was an advertising agency known as TMP Worldwide that placed ads in telephone directories. The company at the time touted a newer business, the Monster Board, an online jobs listing.The stock peaked on a split-adjusted basis at more than $86 a share at the height of the internet bubble in March 2000, valuing the company at almost $8.4 billion.

Investigation

Founder Andrew McKelvey left the company in 2006 amid an investigation into the backdating of stock options for executives. He died in 2008. The company’s general counsel pleaded guilty in the case and the chief operating officer was convicted in a criminal trial.

Monster, which will continue to operate as a separate entity under its own name, is the latest survivor from the early crop of internet companies to get acquired. Verizon last year bought the former America Online for $4.4 billion, while the same buyer agreed last month to purchase the web assets of Yahoo! Inc for $4.83 billion.

Among other internet high-flyers from the 1990s, Ebay, which went public in 1998, and Amazon. com, which held its initial public offering in 1997, are still publicly traded companies.

For staffing provider Randstad, the purchase will bolster its position in the US, a country the Amsterdam-based company has been targeting for years. The acquisition will immediately add to earnings per share, it said. The buyer plans to begin a tender offer, and aims to complete the transaction in the fourth quarter.

Randstad fell less than 0.1 per cent to €39.43 euros in Amsterdam, giving the company a market value of €7.2 billion. Monster rose 4.9 per cent yesterday to close at $2.77 in New York. – (Bloomberg)