Yahoo! completes deal for Hotjobs

Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Yahoo! Inc. agreed to take over Internet career site HotJobs.com for $436 million Thursday after the owner of rival Monster.com decided not to sweeten its 6-month-old offer for HotJobs.

Yahoo had made an unsolicited bid for HotJobs two weeks ago in hopes of wresting the No. 2 help-wanted site away from No. 1 Monster, which is owned by TMP Worldwide Inc. of New York.

Analysts had expected a bidding war between TMP and Yahoo, but TMP said Thursday it would not raise its bid.

"We look forward to competing with HotJobs in this dynamic and growing marketplace," TMP’s chairman and chief executive, Andrew McKelvey, said.

HotJobs CEO Dimitri Boylan predicted the alliance with Yahoo will help realize his goal of toppling Monster.com in the $1 billion market for online job postings. "This is going to be a very powerful combination," he said.

With revenue expected to be down 37 percent this year, Yahoo is hunting for new ways of making money beyond advertising. HotJobs charges employers and recruiters to post job openings and to get access to its database of resumes.

HotJobs’ database of 5 million resumes trails Monster.com’s 14 million, and HotJobs lost $21.2 million in the first nine months of the year.

But Yahoo believes HotJobs is in good position to take advantage of the expected surge in online job postings and recruitment as the economy recovers. Analysts expect HotJobs’ revenue to rise 12 percent next year.

Separately Thursday, San Antonio-based SBC Communications Inc., the parent of Pacific Bell and other regional telephone companies, bought a 3 percent stake in Yahoo from its largest shareholder, Softbank America Inc.

SBC and Yahoo agreed last month to jointly sell high-speed Internet access over digital subscriber lines beginning next year.

The exact value of the deal was not disclosed, but at Thursday’s close of $17.77, 3 percent of Yahoo would be worth $304 million.