Contact Center Solutions Industry News

[March 20, 2006]

uSwitch sale nets Marquess pounds 105m

(The Daily Telegraph, Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)THE Queen's cousin, the Marquess of Milford Haven, looks set to make up to pounds 105m from the sale of utility website uSwitch.com to US media group EW Scripps.

Scripps' pounds 210m offer saw off Microsoft, Daily Mail publisher DMGT, GUS-owned Experian and private equity group Advent International to buy uSwitch, which lets consumers compare the price of their gas and electricity suppliers with other providers.

George Milford Haven, who founded the business in 2000, holds a stake of almost 50pc in the website.

The acquisition by Scripps, traditionally a newspaper publisher and TV broadcaster, comes as several media groups try to bolster slowing growth in their core markets by buying internet and digital businesses. Last year, for example, Scripps acquired shopping comparison website Shopzilla.com for $525m ( pounds 299m) and DMGT bought Primelocation.com for pounds 48m. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has also acquired a number of internet companies.

Users of uSwitch are not charged but, if they see a cheaper provider and decide to swap, the website can make a fee for connecting the two.

Its success comes amid price hikes by energy suppliers that could see average dual-fuel bills rise by up to pounds 850 this year as providers face higher wholesale prices.

Scripps is paying about 30 times earnings for uSwitch, which will make profits of between pounds 6m and pounds 9m on a turnover of between pounds 23m and pounds 26m in 2006. It is understood that Scripps plans to export the uSwitch business model to the US.

Marquess Milford Haven said: "The wonderful thing about uSwitch is that we make money by saving people money''.

The deal marks a turn-around in fortune for the Marquess, a polo player and entrepreneur. In 1994 he had to sell the family home, 52-room Moyns Park, after creditors tried to bankrupt him.

He has also been sued by the Queen's bank, Coutts, over a loan, although the two parties later settled out of court.

In the mid-1990s the Marquess invested in Sira, a field marketing business looking to take advantage of energy deregulation. He realised consumers were being overcharged by suppliers but could not access the alternatives and so formed uSwitch, which was advised by LongAcre Partners.

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