MoneySupermarket, a UK-based price comparison site for financial services, is acquiring advice site MoneySavingExpert from founder Martin Lewis, for £87 million ($133 million).
Lewis, a personal finance journalist, launched MoneySavingExpert in 2003. According to the site’s Google Analytics metrics it gets 39 million unique visitors and about 277 million page impressions a month. That makes it a powerful player and Lewis has parlayed this into books and TV shows in the UK.
Although MoneySavingExpert looks like a throwback to a previous era of the Web (which it admittedly is), its bulletin boards regularly hum to the sound of the average Brit looking for a good deal and shooting the shit about stocks and shares. And of course a site with the phrase ‘money saving’ all over it is a natural in a recession.
According to this post, Lewis has an earn-out period of about three years. He plans to retain MSE’s editorial independence from MoneySupermarket.
In the year ended 31 October 2011, MoneySavingExpert reported revenues of £15.773 million (2010: £11.361 million) and EBITDA of £12.642 million (2010: £8.379 million). Here’s the announcement.
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