Travel comparison site Skyscanner has been bought by Chinese industry giant Ctrip, in a deal worth around £1.4 billion.
Skyscanner has been considering an IPO or sale for a while, with Ctrip being named as the buyer on Thursday. Ctrip is China’s largest travel firm, is listed on the NASDAQ and partly owned by the Chinese search company Baidu.
Skyscanner chief executive Gareth Williams said his company “can learn a huge amount from Ctrip”, who is “the clear market leader in China” and will take Skyscanner “one step closer to our goal of making travel search as simple as possible for travellers around the world”.
“Ctrip and Skyscanner share a common view – that organising travel has a long way to go to being solved. To do so requires powerful technology and a traveller-first approach,” Mr Williams added.
Skyscanner will continue to run independently, with the same management team. Its biggest investor, Scottish Equity Partners, said it was “particularly pleased” that Skyscanner would continue to be headquartered in Edinburgh.
James Jianzhang Liang, co-founder and executive chairman of Ctrip, said the sale would “strengthen long-term growth drivers for both companies.”
“Skyscanner will complement our positioning at a global scale and Ctrip will leverage our experience, technology and booking capabilities to Skyscanner’s,” he added.
The sale comes just days after Theresa May’s government announced a interventionist industrial policy, with moves to prevent small British companies being bought by foreign giants. Philip Hammond confirmed this approach in his Autumn statement yesterday, saying:
“I am taking a first step to tackle the long-standing problem of our fastest growing technology firms being snapped up by bigger companies, rather than growing to scale.”
Skyscanner serves 60 million monthly active users and is available in more than 30 languages.