B2B site receives $150m investment

Business-to-business e-marketplace Mondus has sold 40.7 per cent of equity to Italian publisher Seat for $150m.

The deal, $140m in Seat shares and $10m in cash, is about $135m more than the website's second round of venture capital funding. The money will be used to fuel the company's expansion into secondary European markets such as Italy, Spain, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries.

Founded in April 1999, Mondus started out with £1m in funding after winning a newspaper competition before raising another £10m from a consortium of venture capitalists.

Mondus has created an online marketplace for smaller businesses, and has more than 157,000 registered buyers and suppliers covering some 70 industries. The company claims that just over a quarter of all business on its site is repeat business.

Mondus employs 120 people in offices in London, Hamburg, New York, Helsinki, Paris and Stockholm, and is ranked sixth in the latest list of the top 100 privately-owned UK dotcoms compiled by the Sunday Times and research firm Bathwick.

The Seat deal gives Mondus access to the 5.9 million businesses contained in Seat's local directories across Europe. Seat recently bought the UK Thomson brand of local directories. Although the deal will see Thomson go online, Mondus executives insisted that it would retain its own brand.

Buyers can source quotes without having to search for suppliers, who benefit from an alternative source of sales leads and reduced customer acquisition costs. Chief competitors to the site are demand aggregators such as bemany.com and purchasepooling.com.

Michael Leavey, managing director of Mondus UK, told vnunet.com: "This deal gives us a massive opportunity to dominate the European space."