Yahoo makes $436 million bid for career site HotJobs in effort to beat Monster.com offer

<br>SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) _ Yahoo! Inc. is making a $436 million unsolicited bid for the career Web site HotJobs Inc. in hopes of beating an earlier offer from the parent company of Monster.com. <br><br>Yahoo

Thursday, December 13th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) _ Yahoo! Inc. is making a $436 million unsolicited bid for the career Web site HotJobs Inc. in hopes of beating an earlier offer from the parent company of Monster.com.

Yahoo said Wednesday it would pay $10.50 in cash and stock for each share of HotJobs, a significant premium over the shares' Wednesday closing price of $6.47.

Chairman and chief executive Terry Semel said Yahoo was offering HotJobs shareholders a better value, less regulatory risk and faster merger execution than New York-based TMP Worldwide Inc., Monster.com's parent company.

TMP offered to buy New York-based HotJobs in June in a stock-swap deal that initially valued HotJobs at $12.20 a share. Shares of TMP were off $2.54, or 6 percent, to $42.51 on the Nasdaq, meaning HotJobs shareholders would now get TMP stock worth only $9.33 for each HotJobs share.

In a statement late Wednesday, HotJobs said its ``merger agreement with TMP remains in effect.'' The company said there ``is no assurance as to whether a transaction would result from any discussions with Yahoo!''

Their deal is awaiting approval from federal regulators.

Spokesmen for TMP and Monster.com did not immediately return phone calls Thursday.

HotJobs, which has a database of 5 million resumes, would give Yahoo the Internet's second-largest career site, trailing Monster.com, which has about 14 million resumes, Yahoo executives said.

HotJobs charges employers and recruiters to list job postings and to access its database of resumes, and sells software to help manage corporate human resource operations. Founded in 1997, HotJobs lost $21.2 million in the first nine months of this year, on revenue of $92.6 million.

Analyst John Corcoran of CIBC World Markets said Monster.com has several advantages over Yahoo for HotJobs, and said he was surprised Yahoo was making a bid so long after TMP and HotJobs announced their plans.

``This is not 1985 again. `Wall Street' is not the most popular movie this week,'' Corcoran said. ``We're not in this corporate raider mode.''