ONLINE auctioneer QXL Ricardo, which was briefly worth £2 billion at the height of the dotcom boom, is close to being bought for more than £750m by a South African media combine.

An agreed deal, in the region of £17 a share, could come as soon as tomorrow. Sources say the South African company, Naspers, has set itself an informal deadline of this weekend to thrash out terms.

Many thought the US giant eBay or Alibaba.com, the newly floated Chinese internet company, were behind the approach when QXL, which is changing its name to Tradus, admitted to bid talks in November.

Naspers, which owns pay-TV services and newspapers, derives 76% of its income from South Africa. But of all South Africa’s media firms, it has been best at diversifying internationally.

The company is keen to expand into fast-growing markets such as Brazil and China, and last week it bought the Polish instant-messaging system Gadu-Gadu.

Poland accounts for three-quarters of revenue for QXL, which went overseas when it became clear that eBay was becoming dominant in Britain.

Its Polish operations were the subject of a bitter legal battle for three years. Since they were resolved the company’s shares have rallied, almost tripling this year.

QXL is perhaps the last remaining survivor of the original dotcom companies that enchanted investors with heady valuations that bore little relation to assets. The travel site Lastminute.com was sold to Sabre Holdings in 2005.

QXL, which is chaired by former NTL boss Simon Duffy, is also present in the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary, and has made inroads into online classified advertising.

In the last six months its underlying profits rose 28% to £7.7m on sales 56% ahead at £30.6m.

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

Founded in 1997 by former Financial Times journalist Tim Jackson, QXL was briefly valued at £2 billion in the dotcom gold rush.

Dutch venture-capital group Florissant and Izaki, an Israeli consortium, still own a 30% stake between them. They sold down their holding after separately trying to buy the company.

Naspers began life in 1915 publishing Die Burger, a newspaper that supported the Afrikaners against British rule.

In 1985 it pooled its assets with domestic rivals to set up in pay-TV. It also operates in private education.

QXL declined to comment.

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