Seek, Australia's leading online recruitment firm, has paid $25m for a stake in Zhaopin, one of China's largest online classified ad firms.
Telstra, Australia's dominant telco, made an even bolder move into China last month, buying a majority stake in SouFun Holdings, which runs SouFou.com, the leading property website in China, for $254m.
These shrewd moves show how Australia is finally starting to leverage its much-vaunted proximity to China -- at least in geographic terms. As with the west, online advertising of jobs and real estate is relatively well established in Australia. However, the same cannot be said for China -- at least not yet -- and the two deals exploit this comparative advantage.
Seek, which recently listed on the Australian stock exchange, has paid $25m for a 25% stake in Zhaopin, according to Australia's The Age.
The Australia firm previously limited its expansion to the English-speaking world, namely New Zealand and the UK -- it runs a niche site for Aussies seeking work in the UK.
Moving into China's fledgling online recruitment market marks a bold and some would say risky departure.
Nevertheless, Seek's chief executive Andrew Bassat believes the rewards outweigh the risks as the market is at a similar stage of development to the Australian market five years ago -- meaning its ripe for the taking, presumably.
The Chinese online employment market is expected to grow from $US100m last year to $US500m by 2011, according to Ibis Research figures quoted by the company.
Zhaopin, based in Beijing, was established in 1997 and offers more than 200,000 jobs in IT, finance and executive search. Its revenues are around $30m and growing at more than 50% each year.
Its main rival is China HR, 40% owned by US giant Monster. Monster and Seek have been battling it out in Australia for some time; not they are set to compete of a bigger stage. Monster recently snatched Seek's marketing director, Tony Balfour, to be president of Monster's Asia Pacific region.
Interestingly, Balfour will be based in China. Because of its buoyant job market and growing internet penetration, Monster sees China as one of the most attractive online recruitment markets in AsiaPac. So does Seek, apparently.
