Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Travelport break-up: GTA rumour

You know my belief that 2007 will be the year that Travelport is split into three. Well the number one source of traffic to my blog over the last two days has been versions of this search phrase in each of Yahoo! and Google - "travelport may float GTA". Here's an example. Search engine traffic is by no means definitive but as the Worldspan acquisition by Travelport proved, it is more than enough to start a rumour....

UPDATE - Looks like I broke the story first - thanks to anon below who pointed to an eyefortravel article adding to the rumours and speculation. As anon comments the rumoured float valuation of GBP500mm is almost 12% less than the original amount paid by the "old" Cendant paid for Gullivers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

17/12/2004: Cendant Corporation announced that it has agreed to acquire privately held, UK based Gullivers Travel Associates … and Octopus Travel Group Ltd. (together: "Gullivers") for approximately $1.1 billion in cash.

19/02/2007: Blackstone … could float wholesale travel agent Gullivers, originally a UK company, on the London Stock Exchange with an estimated value of £500m. (http://www.eyefortravel.com/index.asp?news=54761&src=nwsltr)

Is it me who’s lost in calculations or there are some millions lost somewhere in the middle?

Anonymous said...

17/12/2004: Cendant Corporation announced that it has agreed to acquire privately held, UK based Gullivers Travel Associates … and Octopus Travel Group Ltd. (together: "Gullivers") for approximately $1.1 billion in cash.

19/02/2007: Blackstone … could float wholesale travel agent Gullivers, originally a UK company, on the London Stock Exchange with an estimated value of £500m. (http://www.eyefortravel.com/index.asp?news=54761&src=nwsltr)

Is it me who’s lost in calculations or there are some millions lost somewhere in the middle?