Acquisition Resources

Richard Osborne, the Northampton based entrepreneur, is celebrating having sold one of his businesses for £250k to a prestigious national media group.

Northampton based entrepreneur Richard Osborne is celebrating having just announced that he has sold UKBusinessForums.co.uk, the UK’s leading free small business advice and help forum, to Sift Media in a deal worth up to £250k.

Richard, who is also the Managing Director of Quick Formations, purchased UKBF in 2004 and then invested in the region of £10k of his own money in high profile branding campaigns, hosting, legal fees and development work in order to grow the forum to become the number one in the UK that it is today.

As UKBF has risen in prominence so has the number of companies interested in purchasing the site and this intensified in recent months when several large bids were made before Sift Media made Richard an offer he could not refuse.

Richard has spent the last few months negotiating the terms of the sale and will continue to hold a management role on the forum for the immediate future.

Bristol based Sift Media is a leading business-to-business publisher specialising in online, interactive professional communities such as Finance Week, AccountingWEB.co.uk, HRZone.co.uk, MyCustomer.com and BusinessZone.co.uk to name but a few.

Speaking about the sale of the forums, Richard Osborne commented: “I was not actively looking to sell UKBusinessForums but I felt that not only did the offer come at the right time for me in terms of allowing me to further develop my wider businesses portfolio, but Sift Media are just as passionate as I am about growing valuable online communities so I knew it would be in safe hands”.

Ben Heald, CEO of Sift Media, commented: “UKBusinessForums is a great fit for our growing portfolio of professional communities. Richard’s done a great job getting the community going and we strongly believe that our comprehensive knowledge in this area will enable us to help the forum develop even further”.

UKBF has been the springboard for several well known companies such as MyVoucherCodes.co.uk that is now the UK’s leading discount website and upon the announcement of the sale forum members were quick to praise Richard for his management and growth of the free to use site.

UKBF now has over 10,000 registered members and independent research has shown that it is the UK’s largest forum of its type.