Žurnal24 director and chief editor Matej Košir confirmed for the STA that Styria bought 35% in Feniks Media, responsible for zurnal24.si, and 25% in OverNet.

Košir, who revealed the move had been initiated by Styria, said that the development would not affect the employees.

He had announced in a press release sent in the morning that Styria planned to continue working with the existing staff of both sites and increase its ownership stake in the coming three years.

The release argues that zurnal24.si and Med.Over.Net complement each other, having different user structures.

Both rank among the top 10 Slovenian web sites, while their joint reach amounts to 750,000 unique users or 57% of the entire web population, ranking them first among Slovenian web sites, the release adds.

The move marks Styria's return to the Žurnal project, as it was in fact the one that launched the Žurnal free weekly paper in 2003. The daily edition Žurnal24 and news portal Zurnal24.si followed in 2007.

Suffering major losses, Styria decided to discontinue all Žurnal publications in mid-2014, but some of the staff reunited in September 2014 to relaunch the zurnal24.si news site under the Feniks Media company, which also runs the vreme.net weather portal.

Meanwhile, Styria also owns the Slovenian bolha.com online second-hand market, jobs portal mojedelo.com, as well as a 25.7% stake in publisher Dnevnik, which is in the process of merging with another major daily newspaper, Večer.