The owner of the Daily Mail is to hive off its daily deals business Wowcher, which will be merged with US rival Living Social in a new company owned by a private equity group.
Daily Mail & General Trust has received £29m for off-loading Wowcher, which saw revenues rise 25% to £30m in the year to the end of September, and will retain a 30% stake in the new company.
Wowcher, which achieved its first full year of operating profit earlier this year, is about double the size of US -based LivingSocial’s UK and Irish operations.
While Wowcher is profitable the move marks the latest consolidation in the once booming daily deals market, which is led by pioneer Groupon. In October, Amazon said that it was closing its Local daily deals from 18 December while Washington-headquartered Living Social, which is also partly owned by Amazon, announced that it was laying off 200 staff in the US – 20% of its workforce.
In September, Groupon cut 1,100 mostly sales and customer service jobs and closing operations in seven international markets.
