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Microsoft Acquires Equity Stake In CareerBuilder |
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Microsoft Corp., Gannett Co., Tribune Company, and The McClatchy Company announced that Microsoft has purchased a minority equity stake in online job site CareerBuilder.com. In a separate agreement, MSN and CareerBuilder have extended their strategic alliance, making CareerBuilder the exclusive content provider to the MSN Careers channel in the U.S. through 2013. MSN and CareerBuilder have also broadened their alliance to include key MSN international sites, facilitating an accelerated expansion overseas for CareerBuilder. "Our strategic business relationship with MSN played a major part in CareerBuilder taking over as the industry leader in 2006, helping to drive critical levels of job search traffic," said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder. "Microsoft's equity stake builds on this successful relationship and establishes a global alliance with one of the world's most ubiquitous technology powerhouses. It enables CareerBuilder to continue to grow faster in the U.S. than any other job site while leveraging a strong international platform to quickly enter new markets in Europe and all over the world." The relationship between Microsoft and CareerBuilder began in January 2004 when CareerBuilder became the exclusive job search engine for the MSN Careers channel in the U.S. CareerBuilder's monthly traffic grew by nearly 10 million unique visitors from 2003 to 2004 with MSN contributing a significant portion of the increased traffic. Similar to the previous arrangement, the new agreement is also performance-based with financial payments driven by the quality and quantity of traffic delivered. The new agreement provides for an extension to 2013, whereby CareerBuilder will pay MSN up to $443 million over the course of seven years to serve as the exclusive job search engine on the MSN Careers channel. In addition, under a new international traffic agreement, MSN has committed to integrating CareerBuilder services across key MSN sites, primarily in Europe. The agreement, in effect until 2013, is also performance-based and will make CareerBuilder the exclusive job search engine on key international sites. CareerBuilder began building a more aggressive presence in international markets in 2006 by launching sites in the UK, Canada and India. Last month, CareerBuilder announced it has acquired Jobbguiden in Sweden and JobbingMall in The Netherlands. MSN plans to launch CareerBuilder on MSN sites in most European countries by the middle of 2008 with several rolling out by the end of 2007.
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