MIH Allegro BV (Netherlands), a company of MIH Internet Europe, which itself is owned by the South African media holding Naspers, is allowed to acquire more than 50 percent of the shares in Slando Limited which operates free online classified portals in Russia and other Eastern European countries. At least the Ukrainian Antimonopoly Committee has no concerns about the deal, as it announced on its website on June 24.

Slando Limited was founded in 2006 in London as a free online classified site for the Eastern European market by the former investment bankers Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall who back in the year 2000 already had launched gumtree.com, which later they sold to EBay and which meanwhile is an important part of EBays global classified business.

Slando at the moment operates in Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine, but also lists local versions of its site for Portugal, Brazil and Greece on Slando.com. It’s strongest in Russia (11 cities). In Ukraine it went live in February 2007 and is presented in six cities: Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa, Kharkov and Crimea.

Naspers is represented in Europe with the Internet companies Allegro, Ricardo, Godu-Godu, Nimbuzz. It also owns 29 percent of the mail.ru group and is invested in OLX. Most recently it acquired Dubizzle.com. More information about all of Naspers Internet companies can be found on Nasper’s website.