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Moneysupermarket chief still cash-rich
Nick Goodway25 Feb 2009
He may have stood down as chief executive and taken a one-day-a-week role as a consultant but Moneysupermarket.com's founder Simon Nixon still picks up a £9.45 million dividend cheque as the website's biggest shareholder.
That's despite falling profits last year and a £70 million goodwill writedown on the value of the deal Nixon did to buy out his former business partner Duncan Cameron just before floating in July 2007.
Nixon cashed in £126 million during the float, which at the 170p issue price valued the business at some £840 million. Since then the shares have slumped to just 48¼p and the value of the website is just £243 million. That forced the goodwill writedown.
New chief executive Peter Plumb said it was inevitable that transactions had slowed down.
Headline earnings dropped 9% to £48.4 million but after the writedown it swung from pre-tax profits of £9.4 million to losses of £59.1 million. The dividend for the year is 3.5p (1.63p).
