Burda buys the shares from Cinco Capital—the company headed by Xing founder and former CEO Lars Hinrichs— though he remains on its supervisory board according to his Xing profile. Perhaps portraying the sentiment towards the business he set up, Hinrichs tweets that price wasn’t the biggest issue: “If u have multiple choices, listen to your heart & select on values. I value: integrity, quality, ambition & alignment. Never price.”

Xing says its new shareholder will be an “excellent partner for the further strategic direction of the company”, but this isn’t a done deal and still needs approval from the German Federal Cartel Office. Burda declined to comment, preferring to keep the details of its digital strategy close to its chest, although a spokesman did say: “The investment in XING is not only financially driven, it’s also strategic”.

The Hamburg-based LinkedIn rival, formerly called OpenBC, targets the German and French language markets more directly than other biz networks and had 600,000 premium subscribers at the end of Q109, each paying at least €4.95 a month—the figure as of Q3 is 661,662, generating €9.96 million (£8.8 million).

This week Xing announced that for the first nine months of 2009 it made 32 percent higher revenue year on year at €33.2 million (£28.4 million). Release