Estonia, Latvia, Legislation, Mergers and take-overs, Real Estate, Technology

Since the annual sales of the companies to be acquired, Kinnisvaraportaal AS and City24 SIA, do not exceed two million euros in Estonia, the transaction does not require regulatory approval, Eesti Meedia said.

"City24 and KV.ee will continue in Estonia as separate portals and Eesti Meedia is not planning to actively interfere in the management of the companies. In the acquisition of the City24 portal an important role was played by the fact that it enables Eesti Meedia AS to expand to the Latvian market, where Kv.ee has not established a foothold. City24 is a strong brand in Latvia which controls almost half of the real estate classifieds market there," Eesti Meedia CEO Sven Nuutmann said.

"It cannot be denied that also the definitive plan of six real estate companies and a rival media group to set up a new real estate portal was a motivation to finalize the process of the purchase quickly," Nuutmann said.

The parties have agreed not to disclose the exact value of the transaction.

Featuring more than 35,000 real estate listings, City24.ee is accessed by approximately 140,000 unique users per week. The previous owner of the portal was 24 M2 OU, a company of Estonian businessman Ilmar Kompus, which bought it from the listed Finnish company Alma Media in 2014.

Eesti Meedia is a media group active in the Baltic countries whose business areas include production of content for print and online media, television and radio production, classifieds portals and printing services. Among other things, the company owns the Postimees daily newspaper and online portal, Kuku radio station, Kanal 2 television channel and the news agency BNS.