Former StepStone Man Piet Derriks Named New Managing Director of Belgian Portal Immoweb

Leading Belgian property portal Immoweb has today announced that it has appointed Piet Derriks to the position of Managing Director. Derriks joins from jobs classifieds giant StepStone where he held a variety of positions in his 21-year stint with the company, most recently as the Managing Director for the firm's operations in France and Benelux. Both Immoweb and StepStone are controlled by German publishing powerhouse Axel Springer which through its AVIV Group subsidiary also owns real estate classifieds titles such as SeLoger in France, Immowelt in Germany and Yad2 in Israel.

Speaking about his new hire, Ait Voncke, CEO of AVIV Group said:

"Piet is a perfect fit for us: he is familiar with online classifieds and yet brings a fresh perspective on the real estate market. His experience at StepStone Group will also help us build a high-performing and innovative European group for online classifieds with the offerings of the AVIV Group."

For his part, Derriks said:

"For 25 years, Immoweb has been a success story and market leader. Millions of Belgians have already found the property of their dreams thanks to Immoweb. The launch of the new website in 2020 gave the platform a new boost – with last summer even setting an absolute daily record in terms of visitors."

"Our market leadership comes with great responsibility. Customers and users count on us to bring new ideas and possibilities to the market. With our free estimation tool, we are already creating a lot of customers for brokers, developers and notaries on our platform. We will soon be launching new tools for them, based on the extensive data available to us."

AVIV Group's new employee will take over a thriving market leading portal which Axel Springer has enjoyed a majority interest in since 2012. The portal brand enjoys a significant advantage over domestic competitors such as Zimmo and Derriks will be expected to entrench the portal's market dominance further whilst "shape[ing] the deeper integration of Immoweb within the AVIV Group"