Britain’s Zoopla bought for $3bn

LONDON: Silver Lake is buying Zoopla and PrimeLocation owner ZPG for 2.2 billion pounds ($3bn), landing the Daily Mail publishing group a 642 million pound windfall for cashing out of online property portals.

Along with rival and market leader Rightmove, ZPG dominates online searches by people looking to buy or rent homes in Britain. Zoopla’s sites carry property listings for nearly 15,000 estate agent branches.

Residential property transactions across the UK rose by 4.5 per cent year-on-year to 1,206,180 in

the year to March 2018, seasonally adjusted provisional data from HM Revenue and Customs for those with completion values of 40,000 pounds or more show.

Launched in 2007, ZPG was floated in 2014 and its shares have since risen by 69pc.

Newspaper owner Daily Mail and General Trust, which merged its property portals Findaproperty and PrimeLocation with ZPG in 2012, will receive 642 million pounds for its near 30pc stake.—Reuters

Iliad’s profit misses forecast on Italy hit

PARIS: French telecoms group Iliad missed market forecasts for its 2017 profit increase on Friday due to losses related to its planned launch in Italy, knocking its already weakened shares.

Iliad, majority-owned by its billionaire founder Xavier Niel, said annual sales rose 5.6 per cent from last year to around 4.9 billion euros ($6bn) — in line with forecasts.

However, its 2017 consolidated core earnings of 1.78bn euros — up 6pc from a year ago — were below forecasts of 1.83bn euros from analysts polled by Inquiry Financial for Reuters.

Chief Financial Officer Thomas Reynaud confirmed Iliad will launch in Italy “before the summer”, as part of plans to branch out from the competitive, domestic French market.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2018