Entrepreneur Ray Nolan lifted as Skyscanner sold for £1.4bn

Chinese travel service provider Ctrip. com has agreed to buy Skyscanner. com, in which Irish entrepreneur Ray Nolan has a minority stake, for £1.4 billion (€1.65bn).

Ctrip said it would acquire the stakes of the majority shareholders and would look to buy the shares of the remaining stakeholders in the firm.

Company records show Mr Nolan has a stake of around 2 per cent in the firm, which would be worth just under £30 million under the planned acquisition. Mr Nolan was chairman of the travel search firm between September 2010 and November 2013. Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital invested in Skyscanner in 2015, in a deal said to be worth $100 million (€94.5m). In January this year, a venture capital fundraising round saw Skyscanner take on $192 million in new investment from investors such as Yahoo! Japan, Artemis, Khazanah Nasional, Baillie Gifford, Vitruvian Partners.

Management team

Edinburgh-headquartered Skyscanner, which was founded in 2003 by Bonamy Grimes, Gareth Williams, Barry Smith, will remain operationally independent, and will continue with its current management team.

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Mr Williams, chief executive of the firm, said the deal would further Skyscanner’s global development.

“Ctrip is the clear market leader in China and a company we can learn a huge amount from,” he said. “Today’s news takes 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.”

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year and will be mainly a cash transaction, with Ctrip shares and loan notes also part of the agreement.

“Skyscanner is one of the largest travel search platforms in the world,” said James Jianzhang Liang, co-founder and executive Chairman of Ctrip. “This 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.”