Costa FD swaps coffee for Moneysupermarket.com

COSTA COFFEE finance director Matthew Price has taken the top finance role at price comparison site Moneysupermarket.com

Price will take over as chief financial officer of Moneysupermarket.com, in the first quarter of 2014 succeeding Paul Doughty.

He is currently finance director Costa Coffee and a director at Costa China, all part Whitbread, the UK’s largest hospitality company. He has been at the company for more than five years, initially as FD, working up to finance and commercial director, before taking the role at Costa China less than a year ago.

Previously, he spent four years at J Sainsbury’s, latterly as retail finance director and worked at Sodexo as FD of UK & Ireland corporate services for nearly three years.

Peter Plumb, chief executive of Moneysupermarket, said: “We welcome Matthew to the team. He is equipped to help Moneysupermarket build on the profitable growth we have achieved in recent years through helping more people save more money.

“We say a grateful goodbye to Paul who has done so much for Moneysupermarket over the last nine years.”

Doughty announced he was leaving to pursue other interests in July this year. At the time of the announcement he said: “The last nine years have been exciting and fulfilling. It has been particularly rewarding to guide the company through its IPO and to see revenues and profits more than treble. It is time for me to move on and hand over to a new chief financial officer, whom I will work alongside to ensure an orderly handover.”

Moneysupermarket.com also released its interim management statement at the same time as it announced its new CFO.

According to the results, third quarter trading is in line with board’s expectations. Also, revenues from credit products increased 11% on the same period a year ago, excluding payday loans. However, revenues overall were 4% lower than the third quarter of 2012, while visitor volumes increased 5% for Q3 2013 compared to the same period a year ago.