Calin Fusu, 33, has recently become one of the youngest Romanian millionaires, through money he has made from the Internet, a business which the "old capitalists" of Romania refused to invest in, because they lacked the necessary understanding or were put off by untouchable assets.
Kishinev-born Fusu, who, aged 16, was the youngest student to enrol at the Academy of Economic Sciences in Bucharest, sold a minority stake in Neogen, the company he created in Targu Mures in 2000, under the name of Rogenerator together with three other young people, Andras Nagy, Lazlo Robert and Zoltan Bodo.
Neogen, which has more than 800,000 visitors a week, owns a number of websites, the best known being bestjobs.ro, noi2.ro, doizece.ro and club.ro. Neogen currently has more than 1.3 million registered users.
Fusu sold some of his shares to US-based fund Tiger Global Management and to Dutch fund Wouwer. Fusu would not reveal the value of the stake he sold, merely saying that the amount of 6 million euros suggested as the value of the deal involving the minority interest in the company was "exaggerated".
On Tuesday night, the Biris & Goran law firm announced that the cumulated value of the transactions of minority stakes in the online companies - eJobs and Neogen - was in excess of 10 million euros. The value of the deal for eJobs was 4.2 million euros for 30%, which means the sum paid for Neogen can be calculated at 6 million euros. eJobs, the biggest online recruitment site was created by Liviu Dumitrascu, 30, and Daniel Tatar, 29.
Fusu told ZF that the negotiations for the sale of the Neogen shares took about two months and the deal was finalised before the Tiger-eJobs deal. He did not wish to reveal whether he knew about the talks the Americans were conducting with eJobs.
As for the deal, Fusu says it is an investment, not a sale.
"We are not talking about a sale, we are talking about an investment. Neogen attracted an investment for development," Neogen's top man said. He says the money from the two funds will be used chiefly to expand the Neogen business.
"The acquisitions of websites like faces.md or colegi.ro will be followed by other (acquisitions), in Romania and in the region. The company will also offer payment solutions for the video content creators on the Video.Neogen.ro website," the officials of the company said. "The first step we took after signing the contract was to let employers registered with BestJobs post unlimited free ads, therefore I believe the Neogen customers are the main beneficiaries of this investment," Fusu said. The company announced on May 11 that it would allow companies to place ads on the bestjobs.ro site free of charge.
Becoming one of the first dotcom millionaires in Romania as a result of this transaction, Calin Fusu says that the deal he struck with the two investment funds will not generate significant changes in Neogen's operations, or in his personal life.
"I will continue to live in the same rented flat, particularly because it is very close to the office. We will all probably work more than before because we are responsible for other peoples' investments," he added. Asked if he planned to start other businesses or invest on the stock market, Fusu said that he had no such plans.
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