Tamedia acquires a share in jobsuchmaschine.ch - Urs Hügli enforces the job market online of Tamedia

Press Release 

Zurich, 6 January 2009 - The Tamedia media enterprise acquires a share in the job search portal jobsuchmaschine.ch. The specialised search site will strengthen the market position of Tamedia's job market online, which up to now consisted of the job portals alpha.ch and jobwinner.ch. In the future, the ads of alpha.ch and jobwinner.ch will be integrated into the services of jobsuchmaschine.ch and the job portals will be linked to each other. The partnership between alpha.ch, jobwinner.ch and jobsuchmaschine.ch will produce the second-strongest job platform network in Switzerland in terms of ads and range.

The job search portal jobsuchmaschine.ch was founded in the year 2000 and is based on a search robot developed by the founding team. The robot searches hundreds of websites of companies and personnel consultants as well as job platforms of other providers for new job openings on a daily basis. In Switzerland jobsuchmaschine.ch reaches 101,000 unique clients (Wemf NET Audit November 2008). In addition to the search portal jobsuchmaschine.ch, Jobsuchmaschine AG operates the fee-based job site jobengine.ch and the information service jobmonitor.ch for human resources specialists.

In a first step, effective end of 2008, Tamedia acquired 20 percent of Jobsuchmaschine AG, domiciled in Berne, which was before wholly owned by the founders. An increase in the holding to 49 percent is planned for 2011. The remaining 51 percent are expected to be taken over in 2013. The parties have agreed not to disclose additional terms of the transaction.

Furthermore, since the beginning of December 2008 Urs Hügli, supported by the management team of the leading Swiss real estate site homegate.ch, has been enforcing the expansion of Tamedia's job market online. For the time being, Urs Hügli, CEO of Homegate AG, will also be responsible for the online job market. Hügli has been heading Homegate AG, in which both Tamedia and Edipresse are holding a 45 percent interest, since its foundation in 2001 and has turned homegate.ch into the market leader in Switzerland together with his staff, now numbering 36. Up until the year 2000 he had held various management positions at the Zürcher Kantonalbank and other Swiss financial institutes.