Naspers, the South African media conglomerate, is understood to be close to agreeing a £17-a-share offer to buy Tradus, the online auctioneer formerly known as QXL Ricardo, in a deal that values the company at nearly £800 million.

If the sale of the group goes ahead, the local managers of Tradus’s operations in Poland are set to reap a £45 million windfall.

Simon Duffy, the former head of NTL who is now chairman of Tradus, and Christian Unger, chief executive, are understood to be hammering out the final terms for an agreed deal with their counterparts in Naspers.

A fully financed offer is expected to be announced early this week, valuing Tradus at 35 times next year’s expected earnings, a multiple seen only in sales of hedge fund businesses over the past couple of years.

Since the end of the dot-com boom seven years ago, takeovers in most other industry sectors have typically valued target companies at between 12 and 16 times prospective earnings.

Tradus is a market leader in most of Eastern Europe, including Poland, where it auctions, on average, 100,000 pairs of shoes a month on its website.

As QXL, however, it was racked by controversy when its Polish management, led by Arjan Bakker, were accused by the main board directors of taking control of the Polish operations “fraudulently”, leading to a three-year legal dispute.

The Poles disputed QXL’s claim and both sides eventually agreed to settle the dispute, resulting in the Polish business reintegrating with QXL and the Polish management receiving a 6 per cent stake in the group.

Naspers owns newspapers and pay-TV services. It derives about three quarters of its income from South Africa.

In September, QXL invested in molotok.ru, a small Russian auction site in which Naspers has a stake.

JPMorgan Cazenove is advising Tradus.

Tradus declined to comment.

Tradus increased its pretax profits 28 per cent to £7.7 million, on revenues up 56 per cent to £30.6 million, in its first half, to September 30.

Analysts expect full-year profits next year of £21 million.

The group’s other big shareholders are Florissant, a private equity group, with a 15 per cent stake, and Izaki, an Israeli investor group, with 14 per cent.

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