A major change has taken place behind the scenes at Xing, the business networking company based in Hamburg, Germany.  Burda Media is now the primary shareholder due to a transaction that saw it purchase a lot of stock from Cinco Capital GmbH.

Burda bought a whopping 1,323,041 shares for €36.50 each (which works out to about $72.3 million).  It controls a 25.1 percent stake in Xing as a result.  This wasn't any sort of hostile takeover, though.

Stefan Gross-Selbeck, the CEO of Xing, wrote in a blog post, "I'm very excited about this participation and the future cooperation with Burda.  It's a match made in heaven: Burda Media as the leading European media group and XING as the leading European business network."

Gross-Selbeck next went on to describe Burda as a long-term investor with an interest in international matters.

What we have here, then, is a significant gesture of confidence in Xing and the business networking field.  Along with what may be a sign that Xing will try harder to challenge LinkedIn in the U.S., or at least expand into other parts of the world.

In case you're curious: Xing currently has 8 million members who handle their online networking affairs in 16 different languages.

Related Articles:

> LinkedIn, Twitter Connect Through Status Updates

> LinkedIn Tests A New Design

> LinkedIn Announces 50 Million User Milestone