SKYSCANNER founder Gareth Williams has said the company “remains completely committed” to Scotland following its £1.4 billion sale to Chinese travel management group Ctrip.
Mr Williams founded the business in 2003 with Bonamy Grimes and Barry Smith and he was quick to reinforce the company’s assurance to Scotland, saying: “Skyscanner was born in Edinburgh and we remain completely committed to our offices here and in Glasgow. We’ll continue to recruit at pace for roles across the world, including our offices in Scotland, where we employ over 470 people.”
Scottish Equity Partners is the largest shareholder in Skyscanner. Its managing partner Calum Paterson said: “Skyscanner is a great inspiration to up and coming technology companies in Scotland and across the UK. High profile, successful investments such as Skyscanner enhance our track record and help us raise further funds for investment.”
Skyscanner has almost 10 million shares issued and assuming all share classes rank equally, Mr Williams can expect to receive around £140m, mainly in cash with the remainder consisting of Ctrip ordinary shares and loan notes.
Scottish Equity Partners is expected to receive around £380m.
Declining to comment on the precise figure, Mr Paterson said the deal represented an “exceptional return for our fund and our investors”.
He added that Ctrip will enable Skyscanner to accelerate its growth internationally and praised the fact the company will continue to be based in Scotland and run by the current directors.
“I think the quality and attitude of the ownership is much more important than its nationality,” said Mr Paterson. “In this case it is very clear that Ctrip will be an excellent partner and Skyscanner will benefit from Ctrip’s expertise and global reach.”
Founded in 1999, Ctrip is one of the biggest travel businesses in China. Its co-founder and executive chairman James Jianzhang Liang said the acquisition will strengthen long-term growth drivers for both companies.
“Skyscanner will complement our positioning at a global scale, and we will leverage our experience, technology and booking capabilities to help Skyscanner,” he said.
Skyscanner’s current management team will continue to manage operations independently as part of the Ctrip group when, if expected, the deal concludes by the end of the year.
“Ctrip is the clear market leader in China and a company we can learn a huge amount from,” said Mr Williams. “In taking the next step to achieving our goal, Skyscanner will remain operationally independent and our growing global team will continue to innovate and deliver.”
The firm, which has revenues of around £120m, enables users to compare prices from hundreds of travel sites when searching for flights, hotels, and rental cars. It serves 60 million monthly active users and is available in more than 30 languages.
Already firmly established in Europe, Skyscanner has a growing presence in Asia Pacific and China, and the Americas.
Its backers include the Malaysian government, Yahoo Japan, and US-based investment firm Sequoia.
Sandy Kennedy, chief executive of Entrepreneurial Scotland called the deals for both Skyscanner and FanDuel – which earlier this week confirmed it was merging with rival Draft Kings – an “incredible achievement”, adding that he hoped returned investments would be recycled into the next generation of Scottish start-ups.
“Both those businesses didn’t exist ten years ago and someone has built them from scratch to a global position and somebody has come in and put hard cash or shares down to pay for those. It’s an incredible achievement.”
But he added that a conversation remained over whether Scottish businesses sell too quickly.
“We, Scotland, have to be careful that we don’t end up slagging off people that have done something remarkable. This could be conflated with the conversation around Scottish firms selling out but this is two really big firms selling for big prices.
Nick Jones, partner and head of TMT at Cavendish Corporate Finance said: “Whilst it’s a pity that one of the UK’s genuine tech stars will lose its independence, results such as this can only be positive for the eco-system overall.”
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