Director of corporate communications at DHI Rachel Ceccarelli has confirmed the company’s tech job board, Dice, will be exiting Europe this summer. Dice sites in the UK and Germany will officially be closing on August 31, 2018. No other European countries or regions are serviced.
“This was a strategic decision for DHI to focus efforts on eFinancialCareers, where we have a strong competitive opportunity to serve technology professionals in the financial services industry globally,” says Ceccarelli.
All contracts which run beyond August 31 will be reviewed, and outstanding inventory at this date will be credited. There are no changes to Dice’s U.S. business, and they will continue to operate in North America.
Readers will remember that Dice announced a new CEO in April, replacing longtime CEO Mike Durney with Art Zeile. In May, DHI stock spiked on rumors of a potential buyout from a hedge fund. The fund said the company was “undervalued” and represented an “attractive investment opportunity.”
The move to close down Europe and cut costs could reflect a strategy to make a sale more attractive. CareerBuilder, you might remember, also cut costs before being acquired by Apollo last year.
A now-former client of Dice in in the UK told me he thought it was a classy move for Dice to refund the money it had committed to spending for the service this year.