DMGT has agreed to purchase the Loot business in the UK and Ireland from Scoot.com for approximately £45m in cash.

The deal is subject to the approval of Scoot's shareholders and to Irish competition clearance.

DMGT has also agreed to make £10.5m immediately available to Scoot, which will be repayable on completion of the deal, or if it does not proceed.

Loot is one of the UK's leading free classified advertising publishers,distributing products in print, internet, interactive television andwap. It suffered an operating loss of £2.8m in the 17-month period ended December 31 2000.

Loot was founded in 1984 and launched its first publication, the London edition of Loot, in 1985. The free-ads paper is published in 20 editions a week across the UK with a total 180,000 circulation. The website, Loot.com, generates approximately 24m page impressions a month.

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