Germany’s digital publishing and media conglomerate, Axel Springer said it has reached an agreement with the minority shareholders of Immowelt Group to acquire their shares.
Immowelt provides owns classified websites for the real estate industry in German-speaking countries. Some of its top platforms include immowelt.de and immonet.de, which are among the most visited real estate platforms in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The company disclosed in a statement that Rheinische Post Mediengruppe and Münchner Zeitungsverlag will sell their shares, as will the two founders of the company. Both of them left Immowelt’s operational management last year.
Axel Springer said the complete takeover and transfer of the shares to AVIV Group is part of its plan to accelerate Immowelt’s growth and to strengthen the cooperation between the group’s real estate portals.
AVIV Group was founded in 2018 by Axel Springer as a wholly-owned subsidiary and combines the digital classified business in the real estate, automotive and generalist sectors.
Dr. Andreas Wiele, President Classifieds Media Axel Springer SE and CEO AVIV Group: „Together with the new CEO Cai Ziegler and his team we want to further accelerate Immowelt’s growth. To this end, we want to take advantage of the strength of our approximately 850 international colleagues in the product and technology areas of AVIV Group. I thank both of the founding shareholders as well as our co-shareholders Dirk Ippen of Münchner Zeitungsverlag and Johannes Werle of Rheinische Post Mediengruppe for the many years of excellent cooperation.“
Prof. Dr. Cai-Nicolas Ziegler, CEO Immowelt Group: „For us, growth takes center stage. In our core business, we will therefore put an even stronger focus on the users and position ourselves even more clearly. In addition, we will develop related business areas. With Axel Springer as sole shareholder and as part of AVIV Group, we can concentrate even more on implementing the necessary technological solutions“.
