Interesting -- this may be the largest foreign acquisition by a Chinese internet company to date? Largest I'm aware of was Riot Games by Tencent, which was on the order of $400 million.
Tencent also bought Supercell for $8.6 billion.
Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
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Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#12The company was formed in 2001 by three IT professionals, Gareth Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes, after one of them was frustrated by the difficulties of finding cheap flights to ski resorts.[1]
Lessons: scratching a trivial-seeming personal itch can pay off handsomely in the long term. And it takes a loooong time to make it big in travel.
Like most travel startup founders who've attended industry events over the past few years, I've crossed paths with Gareth and Barry a few times, and found them to be thoroughly warm, supportive and decent people.
This result is fully deserved.
Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#13Ctrip, a Chinese corporation
Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#14Do they use ITA as their back end software?
Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#15Ctrip, a Chinese corporation
Business is increasingly global. Deals of this nature are not so surprising. Would you expand on your comment?
Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#16As an American, I find there are better tools for finding domestic flights. However, for international flights, Skyscanner is always my go to tool.
Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#17Skyscanner is based in Edinburgh, with another large office in Glasgow. This is huge news for the Scottish tech scene, and will hopefully bring much needed cash to help it thrive. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening here in all types of tech. Sadly Scotland's other unicorn, FanDuel, looks set to close its hq in Edinburgh after merging with draft kings. However, that will probably release a lot of talent to h…
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Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#18Skyscanner is based in Edinburgh, with another large office in Glasgow. This is huge news for the Scottish tech scene, and will hopefully bring much needed cash to help it thrive. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening here in all types of tech. Sadly Scotland's other unicorn, FanDuel, looks set to close its hq in Edinburgh after merging with draft kings. However, that will probably release a lot of talent to h…
Yes this really is phenomenal news for Scotland. Here's hoping they were generous with stock and we see a new wave of angel investors emerge.
According to https://angel.co/skyscanner-2 they last raised almost 200m at a 1.6b valuation. I wonder what kind of terms were attached to that. I'm guessing investors will have walked away with a pretty large chunk of the sale.
Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#19Re: Skyscanner acquired by Ctrip for $1.7B
#20Skyscanner is based in Edinburgh, with another large office in Glasgow. This is huge news for the Scottish tech scene, and will hopefully bring much needed cash to help it thrive. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening here in all types of tech. Sadly Scotland's other unicorn, FanDuel, looks set to close its hq in Edinburgh after merging with draft kings. However, that will probably release a lot of talent to h…
Yes this really is phenomenal news for Scotland. Here's hoping they were generous with stock and we see a new wave of angel investors emerge. According to https://angel.co/skyscanner-2 they last raised almost 200m at a 1.6b valuation. I wonder what kind of terms were attached to that. I'm guessing investors will have walked away with a pretty large chunk of the sale.
The founders have already taken some money off the table and made some angel investments. I'm sure that will accelerate now.