Journalist set to profit from company sale
The FOUNDER of financial commentary site Breakingviews.com appears set to sell it to Thomson Reuters for around £10m.
Hugo Dixon, who ran the Lex column of the Financial Times for five years before setting up Breakingviews in 1999, has been in talks with Reuters since July, but the two parties have struggled to agree a fee.
Dixon could earn £2.7m if the deal goes ahead. Also set to benefit are his City backers, such as Roland Rudd, senior partner of Finsbury who could make around £1.4m, Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, and trade minister Lord Davies.
Breakingviews has around 15,000 direct subscribers as well as millions of readers through its columns in papers such as The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times and Le Monde. When it launched in 2000 it was Europe’s first online service specialising in financial comment.