Moneysupermarket share price drops as founder Simon Nixon reveals plans to leave as he sells £98m-worth of shares
Moneysupermarket's share price fell this morning as it was revealed founder Simon Nixon is stepping down from the company he set up in 1993, having just sold off a further 32m shares in the business.
The entrepreneur is presumably feeling pretty epic. The sale of the shares, which represented around 5.8 per cent of Moneysupermarket's total share capital, has netted him £98m – and that's on the back of a sell-off of shares worth £56m in May.
Nixon's stake has now been reduced to around 6.9 per cent. He will step down from the board on 31 December.
Moneysupermarket investors were spooked by the news, with the company's share price down more than six per cent in early trading.
Chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown said: "As the founder of MoneySuperMarket.com, Simon was its first chief executive and led the business through its IPO in 2007. It is arguably the most successful UK ecommerce business founded in the 1990s.
"In 2008, Simon stepped down as chief executive, but has continued to play an active role as executive deputy chairman and more recently as non-executive deputy chairman. In the last two years Simon has been reducing his shareholding and increasing his involvement in other activities. As a result, we have agreed that he will step down from the board at the end of the year. We are grateful to Simon for his contribution to the group and to the board."
Or to put it another way, he's so moneysupermarket, he doesn't even know it.