Fusion Corporate Partners LLP, the leading digital and traditional media M&A specialist, is pleased to announce the sale of Hobsons Group's corporate division, comprising assets from Hobsons plc as well as the German subsidiaries, Trendence and Hobsons GmbH, to Group GTI a portfolio company of Exponent Private Equity LLP. Fusion acted exclusively for DMGT PLC and its subsidiary DMG Information on the disposals.
Hobsons UK, Trendence and Hobsons GmbH are leading providers of websites, events, publications, market research and outsourced recruitment services targeting the pan-European graduate recruitment marketplace. The brands sold include The Absolventum Kongres, Germany's largest graduate recruitment fair; Trendence, the leading student market research business; GET the leading UK directory and website for graduates; and GRS provider of outsourced services to graduate recruiters.
The sale will allow Hobsons to focus greater time and resource on its admissions and enrolment management solutions business. Chris Letcher, Group Managing Director of Hobsons commented, "Hobsons makes an annual global investment of $20m in the development of its admissions and enrolment management solutions. We want to make sure that European higher education institutions are being given every opportunity to benefit from that investment. That means working closely with those institutions and ensuring that our global capabilities are tightly aligned to local needs. We are selling the corporate recruitment business to enable us to invest more time and resource in doing so".
From Group GTI's perspective the acquisition will further strengthen their European graduate recruitment network, bringing together leading GTI brands such as TARGETjobs, targetjobs.co.uk and TARGETchances with Hobsons's brands. Graham Storey, Chief Executive of Group GTI, commented: "The acquisition will enable us to offer recruiters unrivalled access to final year students and active graduate job seekers from across the UK and Europe." Group GTI is a portfolio investment of Exponent Private Equity LLP who provided equity alongside debt made available by Barclays Bank.
Paul Slight at Fusion commented: "We were pleased to secure an exit for our client in challenging market conditions as they look to refocus their portfolio."
Fusion acted exclusively for clients, DMGT PLC and its subsidiary DMG Information on the disposals. The team responsible for this transaction were Paul Slight (pslight@fusioncorp.co.uk), Toby Gordon (tgordon@fusioncorp.co.uk) and Paul Kelly (pkelly@fusioncorp.co.uk). The corporate team at Nabarro, headed by Barry Maytum provided legal advice to the vendors.