QXL ricardo plc announced that its French subsidiary has acquired the operations of Aucland.fr, the number two online auction site in France. QXL ricardo plc is a pan-European online auction site offering its service in eleven languages and twelve currencies.

Aucland.fr has over 450,000 members and approximately 300,000 listings currently on its site. Unlike its new parent QXL, the Auckland.fr site charges fees for its service. It will continue to operate in its current form, and the QXL.fr site will migrate to the Aucland.fr platform. Sylvie Fleury, currently Managing Director of Aucland.fr, will serve as the managing director for the combined operation upon completion.

Mark Zaleski, Chief Executive Officer of QXL ricardo, said, "This is a significant acquisition for QXL, consolidating our position in France, the third largest e-commerce market in Europe. Aucland has strong brand recognition, a first-class auction platform that provides an excellent experience for the customer and has a strong management team. I am confident that the combined group, under the leadership of Sylvie Fleury, will extract cost synergies and capitalise on this growth opportunity."

UK newspaper The Guardian called the acquisition a continuation of QXL's "acquisition spree in an bid to take on US auction giant eBay." eBay bought French auction site iBazar in May 2001 for 2,045,000 shares of eBay common stock and approximately $2 million in cash. At that time, iBazar operated in eight countries in Europe and had 2.4 million registered users, 3.1 million listings and gross merchandise sales of more than $95 million.

Acland was founded in April 1999 and is a part of the Europ@web Group. The assets of the business are being acquired for a nominal undisclosed fee.

QXL was started in 1997 by Tim Jackson, a columnist for the Financial Times. QXL merged with ricardo.de AG in 2000, when it changed its name to QXL ricardo plc. QXL ricardo operates auction sites in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland.