Sweden’s private equity firm EQT will buy a majority stake in Facile.it, Italy’s leading online price comparison platform for insurance, products, banking accounts and tv, utilities and tlc subscriptions (see here the press release).
Sellers are Oakley Capital, an Aim London-listed investment company, Facile’s founders Mauro Giacobbe and Angelica Pellizzari, and the brothers Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi Berlusconi (Italy’s former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s children).Â
More in detail, the EQT VIII fund will buy a majority stake in the company, while OakleyCapital will reinvest for a minority stake and the actual managers, including Facile’s ceo Mauro Giacobbe, will remain at their place.  Bofa Merrill Lynch acted as unique financial advisor for the deal.
Oakley had bought a 75% stake inFacile,it in Autumn 2914 for a 27 million euros price, while founders and the Berlusconi brothers had diluted to 25% (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The Berlusconi brothers had invested in Facile in 2011. Oakley Capital in italy still controls the wellknown web platform for house research Casa.it, part of Home Group (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Founded in 2008, Facile.it is Italy’s leading online destination for consumers to compare prices for motor insurance, energy, telecoms and personal finance products. Today, Facile helps approximately 20 million users to compare prices and save money on key elements of their household expenditure, providing access and comparison to products from 80 providers.
In April 2015 Facile.it bought Mutui.it, an online residential mortgages and consumer finance reaserch platform (see here a previous post by BeBeez), launched in October 2009 by a group of Italian entrepreneurs and web professionals (among them Andrea Piccioni, Alberto Genovese and Silvio Pagliani, respectively eBay Italy’s former country manager, search engines&new business director and marketing director).
Just a couple of weeks ago Facile.it acquired finally a 60% stake in Nexus, a financial mediator focused on personal credit, for 7 million euros (see here the press release).
Facile has achieved an average annual top-line growth of 21% over the past five years and in 2017 the company generated approximately 66 million euros in sales from 59 millions in 2016 with a 12.6 million euros ebitda, a 1.2 millions net profit and a 37.3 million euros net financial debt.
