South-African investment fund NASPERS, one of the biggest investors in Romanian online businesses, will take over tocmai.ro, one of the largest classifieds sites in Romania. NASPERS already controls OLX.ro, which is the other large platform for free ad.s.

The South-African fund has reached an agreement with Norwegian group Schibsted to take over its classifieds operations in Romania and Portugal. In exchange, NASPERS will sell their similar operations in Hungary to Schibsted, according to a report the Norwegian group submitted to NASDAQ.

Schibsted owns 95% of Romanian firm Sibmedia Interactive, headquartered in Sibiu, which owns the tocmai.ro classifieds site, according to Mediafax.

NASPERS controls Allegro Online Services Romania, the firm that manages the OLX.ro classifieds website. OLX.ro was previously called mercador.ro.

OLX.ro is the highest ranked Romanian website, based on daily unique visitors and pageviews, according to alexa.com, while tocmai.ro comes second.

However, both sites had hefty losses in 2013, as they invested a lot of money in advertising. Sibmedia Interactive had losses of EUR 5.7 million for only EUR 0.64 million turnover. Allegro Online Services Romania posted losses of EUR 4.6 million on EUR 1.2 million sales, according to official data from the Finance Ministry.

The main competitors in the online classifieds market are okazii.ro, which is owned by American investment fund New Century Holding (NCH), and specialized classifieds sites for auto and real estate.

NASPERS also owns eMAG.ro, the largest online retailer in Romania, as well asother e-commerce websites.

editor@romania-insider.com