About 10 high- and mid-level executives at Adevinta, the Amsterdam-based marketplace giant, have left the company this year — most from the company’s legal, HR and communication departments in France, Spain and the Netherlands, the AIM Group has learned.
All of the departures came after Antoine Jouteau, formerly CEO of Adevinta subsidiary LeBonCoin, took over in August 2022 as CEO, following the retirement of Rolv Erik Ryssdal. It is not uncommon for a new CEO to build a new team, either to cut costs or to put his (or her) own structure in place.
Adevinta is in flux — with a potential reported takeover by two private equity companies pending. Blackstone and Permira, both current shareholders in the company, have made a non-binding, tentative offer to take the company private. It is currently listed on the Oslo stock exchange.
Adevinta merged with EBay Classifieds Group in 2021, with Schibsted and EBay as the lead shareholders.
Many of the executives who have left Adevinta recently were with the company since its inception in 2019, in a spinoff from Nordic publishing and marketplace company Schibsted. The number we have found is about 10, although it could be higher. The AIM Group reviewed LinkedIn profiles and found that Casandra Lord, director of communications, and Jeremy Briscombe, chief legal officer, no longer list Adevinta as their employer. We were told that most of the employees who left have signed non-disclosure agreements, and could not discuss their departures.
The AIM Group request comment from Adevinta but did not receive a response. We will update this report when / if the company responds.
In addition to these executives, Annemarie Buitelaar and Gregory Kukolj, CEO and CMO respectively of Adevinta Benelux, announced plans to leave the company at the end of the year. The Benelux unit operates Marktplaats.nl, the leading horizontal marketplace in the Netherlands, and 2DeHands / 2EmeMain, the twin Belgian horizontal. Both announced their plans in separate LinkedIn posts.
The recent departures are separate from the early 2022 restructuring of Adevinta France, when Jouteau was its CEO.
Adevinta has downsized significantly following its merger with EBay Classifieds Group. Most recently, the company exited from Hungary, selling its local assets to real estate specialist Ingatlan.com. “The completion of the divestiture of our Hungarian marketplaces is another important milestone in the optimisation of our portfolio and the execution of our Growing at Scale strategy, as we continue to focus on our five European markets [Benelux, France, Germany, Italy and Spain],” said Jouteau at the time.