StepStone takes leading position in Germany and Switzerland with strategicacquisition - 08/2000

Job-Today, which was founded in 1996, is currently Germany's third largest
online recruitment company. It specialises in job offerings from the IT
sector, being the leading recruiter in this field in Germany. It has
excellent relationships and co-operation agreements with leading German IT
magazine publishers, particularly with the Konradin Verlag. Konradin Verlag
will remain a shareholder in StepStone. It also has an excellent regional
presence, being particularly strong in Berlin in co-operation with the print
and online media of Gruner & Jahr in Berlin (BerlinOnline, Berliner
Zeitung). Job-Today also has a strong customer base acting for many
well-known German and multinational companies such as Mummert & Partner, GFT
Technologies, SAP, Mannesmann, Brokat, Deutsche Postbank and E-Plus.

In October 1999 Job-Today acquired SwissWebJobs Gmbh, one of the leading
online recruitment agencies in Switzerland. In February 2000, Job-Today
entered into a merger agreement with Job-Index, a leading Swiss HR publisher
who owns the online recruitment site Jobs.ch. The combined businesses are
believed to be the largest online recruiter in Switzerland.

In the first half of 2000, Job-Today had sales of EUR 3.6 million which was
up 220 % on the comparable period of the previous year. As at June 30th
2000, there were 26,604 CVs in the company's database, the Job-Today sites
had 9237 vacancies and the company had 96 employees in Germany, Switzerland
and Austria.

StepStone is already the largest commercial enterprise in Europe in the
sector in terms of revenues, user sessions, page views and listings and has
established or is establishing market leadership in all eleven countries in
which it operates. In addition the company is currently opening additional
sites in Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, plus
value-added services and content for users and new software systems for
customers via Application Service Provider activities.

Giles Clarke, Chief Executive of StepStone, said The acquisition of
Job-Today represents a unique opportunity to catapult StepStone into a
leading position in the fast growing and important German market. There is
little overlap between Job-Today and StepStone's German subsidiary, and the
prospects for the combined businesses are exciting in that it will allow us
to create a specific Stepstone IT portal within our overall product
offering. The IT skills shortage in Europe is one reason why we have
already opened Stepstone India to help meet our customers' recruitment needs
in this area. We will build on and develop even further the strengths that
Job-Today brings in this specialist IT recruitment arena. In addition,
Job-Today's operations in Switzerland are a considerable benefit since
StepStone is not currently represented in that country.

Dr. Andreas Albath, Managing Director of Job-Today, will be appointed as
Managing Director of the combined operation in Germany. Previously, Dr.
Albath held senior positions in Bertelsmann (Gruner & Jahr- newspaper
division) and also worked for McKinsey. Dr. Albath commented, I am very
excited about the opportunities that lie ahead, and the challenge of leading
this operation as a major force in Germany. The combined strength of the
two companies is larger than the sum of the two parts independently and
creates an unassailable force in European Online recruitment.

The total purchase consideration is EUR 34.9 million. The consideration will
be satisfied by the issue of 4,057,128 StepStone shares, plus an additional
number of StepStone shares to equal EUR 18.144 million at the closing date
on September 7th 2000. These latter shares will be placed with institutional
investors.