Trinity Mirror has made another acquisitive move into new media, with the £50.5 million purchase of Hotgroup, the recruitment company.

The deal follows last month's purchase of GAAPweb.com site, the country's leading online recruitment site for accountancy and financial services, and the acquisition of Smartnewhomes.com. The publishers of the Daily Mirror have now spent more than £80 million in less than three months buying advertising-centred websites, as it chases after classified ad budgets as they migrate from traditional media to online. Trinity Mirror is also one of the partners in the Fish4 network of jiobs, homes and car sales websites.

As reported by Times Online, later this month, Trinity Mirror is expected to launch a new service aimed at expanding its Racing Post readership, offering webcasts of horse races and comparative odds from five selected bookmakers.

The deal with Hotgroup will bring in more than 2 million registered users and a network of sites, including workthing.com, planetrecruit, jobsfinancial and hotrecruit. The sites advertise between 30,000 and 40,000 job vacancies.

The traditional advertising division comprises five recruitment consultancy businesses.

"We see exciting opportunities for the management and continued development of the Hotgroup alongside our existing recruitment advertising businesses, and the acquisition is consistent with our strategy of growing Trinity Mirror's core classified franchises both on- and off-line," Sly Bailey, Trinity Mirror's chief executive, said.

Shareholders in Intermix Media, the site's owner, have launched an action alleging that executives, directors, officers and controlling shareholders of Intermix benefited at the expense of the company and investors when they agreed to sell the company to News Corporation, the parent company of News International, owners of The Times and Times Online.

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