Australia is not only a great place to build an online classifieds business, it's apparently also a great place to finance it.

A report by AIM Group's Angela Hawksford tells how the Australian Stock Exchange has found favour with giants including REA Group, Seek and Carsales, which "prefer the Australian exchange for its compactness and understanding of classified businesses".

It is, she says a move that represents both a shift in the attitudes of Australian tech firms and a growing confidence in Australia's burgeoning tech sector.

While the A$1.5 trillion ASX is "a drop in the ocean" compared to the Nasdaq and NYSE - together valued at US$26 trillion - it has learned how to value tech companies.

Carsales started as an Australia-only operation but now owns businesses insoutheast Asia and Latin America including Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and South Korea.

"Similar successes have been repeated by other Australian classified businesses, REA Group and Seek," she says, adding, "Online classified businesses have been successful on the ASX simply because classified advertising is a very well understood industry," a reference to the days when print's classified "rivers of gold' were "the financial backbone of the newspaper industry".

Another ASX-listed classified company is Mitula Group, which is headquartered in Spain. AIM's Hawksford quotes chairman Simon Baker saying that with "a little bit of angel, we have very little VC... the stockmarket ends up becoming like a defacto VC fund."

More at http://www.aimgroup.com