Monster Worldwide, US parent company of global online careers and recruitment resource Monster.com, announced that it has completed its acquisition of ChinaHR by purchasing the remaining 55% stake for US$174 million.
Monster took an initial 40% stake in ChinaHR for $50 million in 2005 and another 5% in January 2006.
Beijing-based ChinaHR currently operates 12 offices across China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In the first half of this year, China had created more than 6.4 million jobs.
China’s online recruitment market grew by 36% in the first quarter over the same period a year earlier and generated 277 million yuan (US$40 million) in sales, nearly doubling from two years ago.
The growing interest in online job sites is expected to continue with some 70 million college graduates a year and China’s more than 250 million Internet users increasingly spending more time on the Web due to the popularity of gaming and social networks.
Rival Zhaopin had completed a final round of financing in July and secured US$110 million from two Aussie investors – Macquarie Capital and Seek Ltd, the largest Australian online recruitment firm. The funds will be used to help Zhaopin hire workers in smaller Chinese cities, where the demand is growing faster than in major municipalities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
The market is led by Nasdaq-listed 51Job Inc with a 29% share, followed by ChinaHR’s 24% share and Zhaopin.com with 15%, according to Beijing-based researcher Analysys International.
Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce company, recently announced a global recruitment plan to employ 3000 technology talents from across the globe. About 2000 posts are offered by its Hong Kong-listed Alibaba company and other subsidiaries of the group, including Taobao, Alipay and Alisoft, will also hire 300, 100 and 20 new employees respectively.
By the end of August 2008, the number of its Alipay online payment service users had exceeded 100 million, making it the second largest payment platform after American-based Paypal, which has over 180 million users in the world.
