Money mensch did next
the biggest name in personal finance after launching MoneySavingExpert.com for, give or take a few bob, £80 in February 2003.
In September 2012 he sold it to the Moneysupermarket group in a deal reportedly worth more than £80 million, split between cash, shares and future payments. He then promptly announced his intention to give £10 million away to charity.
While the deal meant he never had to work again, one gets the impression that was — and probably is — never going to happen. A bonus was the agreement that he should remain as editor-in-chief, which meant he could be sure it retained the values he had imposed from the start.
To police that, he had a legally- binding code of conduct drawn up to make sure. All new staff have to read it and agree to be bound by it.
“Any breach of that would have substantial penalties,” he says. “It ensures what we write is in the public interest and not the interests of profit. You won’t find anyone pressuring us to, for example, link to this product over that. We are entirely independent.”
Until now, his role has been more akin to that of a CEO. Sure, he’s been immersed in the content but he’s otherwise been running the show: overlooking the technical stuff, making sure bills get paid.
The new structure will see his head of operations become MD, a new editor-in-chief will be appointed in time — he knows it’s a tough role to fill and anyone decent will have a long notice period — and he will sit on high, pulling strings as and when necessary, which effectively means he’ll line manage his replacement while concentrating on strategy and those all-important ethics.
I suggest he’s stepping aside and he cuts in. “More a case of stepping back. I see this more as a promotion. I’m not letting go. It’s still my passion, still my baby. I’m just moving from parent to grandparent.”
Grandparent? He told his last interviewer he was going from father to uncle. “Did I? “he asks with a smile. “OK. Ask me in a year’s time which analogy works best.”
Cynics have already been quick to question how the brand can continue to thrive without his name behind it. He doesn’t see that as a problem. For one thing this will be a gradual process. For another he’s already begun distancing himself. Have a read. Opinion is more and more being expressed as “we” rather than “I”. His picture will start to become less evident throughout the site.
“It has to stand alone at some stage and be able to deliver in its own right,” he says. Will readers disappear? “My job as executive chairman will be to ensure they don’t. But eventually, if it was a case of me leaving in a good way, that would be fine. If it was because I didn’t believe in what it was doing any more, I would be very hard on it.”
There would be nothing, if ever he needed to assert his
I still don’t like to spend a penny more on things than they should cost