Newmonday.com, the online recruitment venture run jointly by publisher VNU and recruitment firm Randstad, is to close at the end of this month. However the UK arm, newmonday.co.uk, is to remain in operation.

The latest casualty in the tightening e-cruitment market, newmonday.com was launched last year, operating in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain. Despite offering a more sophisticated service than many of its rivals, the jobsite never managed to attract enough candidates or clients to make it a viable proposition.

‘Due to considerably changed conditions in the recruitment market, the revenue of newmonday.com has not met expectations,’ a statement by the company said.

Since the site’s launch, many in the e-cruitment market have believed that VNU, a major business publisher, launched the venture as a fall-back to protect itself should recruitment advertising spend shift significantly from print to online. VNU does not now see enough benefit in a separate online presence across Europe.

Of newmonday.com’s 140 employees, 40 are to be found jobs within VNU’s operations in the UK and the Netherlands. All UK staff are to be retained as Newmonday's UK operations are integrated into VNU Business Publications. 'The website newmonday.co.uk is complimentary to our recruitment print activities in the UK, and it is important that we continue to offer this popular online service,' said Brin Bucknor, MD of VNU Business Publications.

Randstad and VNU said they would try to find posts for the remaining staff in other countries, but it is likely that many jobs will be lost.