Published on : Fri, 04 Nov 2005 08:32GMT
by : Sadat Sayeed

LONDON - The third largest property portal in Britain, Propertyfinder.com, was today acquired by Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group News Corp for £14.3 million ($25.3 million).

This deal makes News Corp the biggest newspaper group to acquire an online business. The company had already announced its intentions of making its presence felt online and towards this end has taken over MySpace.com owner Intermix Media, gaming Web network IGN Entertainment, and online sports company Scout Media for a combined investment of $1.3 billion.

News International, which owns The Sun and The Times, will be a 50 percent owner of the site. The other 50 percent will be owned by realestate.com.au, an Australian property site in which News Corp has a 52 percent stake.

"We believe that the combined forces of News International and REA will provide the business with a good chance of becoming the leader in the UK market over the next two to three years," said Realestate.com.au chief executive Simon Baker. News had made a hostile bid for realestate.com.au. The bid was rejected by the former's shareholders, but Baker insisted that the two deals were separate things. Under the terms of the deal, realestate.com.au will control Propertyfinder.com. The latter is only about 10 years old and lists about 200,000 homes in the UK. More than 700,000 property hunters visit the site each year.

Analysts say that News Corp's entry into this field makes it clear that many newspapers are looking to establish a secure presence online. Says SG Securities analyst Antony de Larrinaga, "As the advertising revenue migrates from hard copy to online, you also get a migration [of readers] away from traditional media publications. That's why you've got so much vigor being put behind trying to secure the future in these spaces. There is no shortage of people throwing a bit of money into the Internet again."