OREANDA-NEWS. November 15, 2013. Alma Media, parent company of BNS and CV Online, has announced the establishment of a joint venture, Alma Career, in collaboration with the U.S. career services company Monster Worldwide, Inc to run the portals of both companies in Eastern Europe.

"In the Baltic countries we will continue cooperation under the name CV Online, but the move will open up wider opportunities for us to offer Monster's international services," the manager of CV Online Estonia, Agu Vahur, told BNS.

The move will intensify cooperation between the two companies on the global level, where Monster needed better representation in Central and Eastern Europe and Alma Media had some countries of the region not covered yet, the executive explained.

Monster Worldwide will become a 15 percent minority owner of Alma Career Oy, the former Monster Oy, by contributing its Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic operations and by acquiring from Alma Media shares in the holding company with a purchase price of 4.9 million euros, with Alma Media owning the other 85 percent.

Monster has an option to increase its ownership to 20 percent by 2017. Monster currently owns 25 percent of the Monster business in Finland with Alma Media holding 75 percent. The joint venture will start operation at the beginning of 2014.

After combining the Monster operations with Alma Media's career services, the combined annual revenue is expected to exceed 35 million euros in 2013. The new company will have career service portals in the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland and Hungary.

Monster Worldwide, which has operations in more than 40 countries, provides services to around 200 million users worldwide.