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Broadbean acquired by owners of Jobsite  

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For non jobsite people - a couple of definitions
Broadbean = A job posting technology with response tracking facility built in (for some customers) - an advertiser is able to simultaneously post via a desktop application on to multiple sites.
Jobsite is a top UK job board owned by Associated Media/Northcliffe which is owned by DMGT (Daily Mail etc)
 
quite an interesting one this - if only for the fact that any company is acquiring anything at moment
what does the acquisition mean?
  • not quite sure what AND's motivations are - Conkers is also owned by them. I guess its going up the supply chain/value chain - like a brewery buying pubs or possibly a fleet of beer delivery lorries to stretch the analogy perhaps a little too far. Still its a little different from their acquisition history of strong vertical job boards.
  • One does not have to question Broadbean's motivation - and well done to those involved
  • AND have an excellent history of buying companies (Jobsite, Jobs Group, InRetail etc) and allowing the management to grow and develop their business without unhelpful intervention. So Dan's open letter (see above) should be taken at face value i think.
  • Will the other major jobboard owners have a problem with this acquisition (their supply lines being owned by a competitor) - and come off the Broadbean feeds. Can't see that happening in a million years - the client is king and Broadbean's client volumes are pretty substantial to forming a job boards marketplace. But lets see.
  • I would be fascinated to know how they valued this business - there is an argument that the product and the whole job posting technology industry is a commodity that could be replaced in the future - but to be fair it is priced so reasonably that there is no great desire from clients to seek any alternative solution.

In summary - Broadbean is a great business - nicely profitable, low overheads, loyal customer base, limited competition but not quite sure how it fits into AND/Jobsite's product set. But that's not the worse problem to have.

Published Oct 23 2008, 10:15 AM by Dominic Sumners

Comments

by Simon Devitt
October 23, 2008 2:00 PM
 

Interesting I guess with both companies now owned by Associated one of the biggest jobsite owners now has some facinating data on how competitors are really delivering response to a large proportion of customers. They don't need NORAS or ABCe to give response figures for competitive sites or their customers they can see it all by looking at their own data.  I suspect they have been very clever.

 
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