News of the sale boosted Scoot's share price 30% this morning, pushing it up to 263p.
The deal includes the operations of the classified advertising listings paper Loot and its online venture Loot.com in the UK, and a 91.67% stake in Buy & Sell in Ireland.
Last year, the Loot business made an operating loss of £2.8m for the 17-month period ended December 31 2000. At the end of December, the business had net liabilities of £3.3m.
The sale was part of a strategic review the company recently initiated.
Scoot paid £180m for Loot last year and the sale of the paper could be a lifeline for the group, which is running out of cash. Two weeks ago, the company said it did not have the £22m it needed to continue trading after the end of August.
Founded in London in 1984, Loot is one of the UK's leading free classified advertising publishers and is now published in 20 editions per week across the UK, with a weekly circulation of approximately 180,000 copies.
Its website, Loot.com, generates approximately 24m monthly page impressions and had 557,000 unique users, based on a March ABCe audit.
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