eBay's Kijiji international classifieds group announced Wednesday it has acquired Gumtree.com (www.gumtree.com) and LoQUo.com (www.loquo.com), two separate classifieds Web sites operating in select international cities. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Gumtree.com, founded in London in 2000 by Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall, is a leading local classifieds site in the United Kingdom (CNN profiled the site last year http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/07/26/gumtree.website). eBay's press release calls Gumtree an online community center for apartment rentals, employment, and goods and services offering multiple city sites in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The Gumtree website says it has sites in cities includilng Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Edinburgh and Dublin.

LoQUo.com, founded in Barcelona in 2002 by Ubaldo Huerta, is a leading community-focused classifieds site in Spain. A local online meeting place, LoQUo specializes in housing, personals, employment, jobs and practical items for sale. LoQUo offers multiple city sites in Spain and other European countries.

Kijiji currently has sites in Germany, Japan, China, Canada, France, Italy, Taiwan, Austria and Switzerland.

"Gumtree and LoQUo are key classifieds sites in the UK and Spain, respectively, and we are pleased to have them in the Kijiji family," said Alex Kazim, senior vice president of new ventures at eBay, responsible for Kijiji. "This is an important step forward in our strategy to expand our global portfolio of Web sites."

eBay does not expect either acquisition to have a material impact on 2005 net revenues and earnings per share, and does not expect either acquisition to affect eBay's financial guidance as issued in connection with its first quarter earnings announcement on April 20, 2005.

http://www.kijiji.com