Auto Trader Group plc is a British automotive classified advertising business. It specialises in new and second hand automotive sales, including cars sold by private sellers and trade dealers. It is listed on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...

, and is a constituent of the

FTSE 100 Index The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also called the FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the "Footsie" , is a share index of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with (in principle) the highest market ...

History

Auto Trader was founded in 1975 by

John Madejski Sir John Robert Madejski, (; born Robert John Hurst; 28 April 1941) is an English businessman, with commercial interests spanning property, broadcast media, hotels, restaurants, publishing and football. He changed his name when his stepfather, ...

. Madejski brought this idea back from the United States, and set up the business with Paul Gibbons in 1977. The first Auto Trader to be established was ''Hurst's Thames Valley Trader'' in 1977. This was followed by the publication of a second title, ''Southern Auto Trader'', which launched in 1981; the business was then known as ''Hurst Publishing''. European venture capitalists

BC Partners BC Partners is a British international investment firm with over $40 billion of assets under management across private equity, credit and real estate in Europe and North America. Its global headquarters are in London. The firm invests across all ...

bought a stake in the business from John Madejski in July 1998 for £260m; then

Guardian Media Group Guardian Media Group plc (GMG) is a British-based mass media company owning various media operations including ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer''. The group is wholly owned by the Scott Trust Limited, which exists to secure the financial and e ...

, who had acquired ''Automart'' in 1982, merged that business with Hurst Publishing in May 2000 so creating ''Trader Media''. In April 2011, the business became the focus of an online petition by a group called the ''Motor Traders Advertising Union'', proposing a mass pull out by motor dealers in the country frustrated by increases in advertising charges. In October 2013, '' AutoTrader.co.za'' (Auto Trader South Africa) a subsidiary of the Auto Trader Group, was sold off to become an independent South African company. In January 2014,

Apax Partners Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...

bought the business from Guardian Media Group for £600m. In March 2014, the company re branded, and became known as Auto Trader, and in March 2015, Auto Trader Group launched an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

, with a market capitalisation of about £2bn.

Operations

Printed magazine

The magazine was published weekly in a number of regional editions. Circulation peaked at 368,000 in January 2000, dropping to an average of 87,000 copies a week in July 2012, and down to 27,000 in March 2013. In June 2013, after thirty six years, the final editions of the printed magazine were published, with the company concentrating on its online business.

Website

Autotrader.co.uk was launched in 1996, allowing users to buy or sell a car online. The site lets users search for cars and other motor vehicles using their postcode. Autotrader.co.uk is the busiest automotive web site in the United Kingdom, which attracts some 10.3 million unique users per month.

Mobile

Auto Trader has had a mobile, initially a

Wireless Application Protocol Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network. A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that use the protocol. Introduced in 1999, WAP achieve ...

site, since 2002. In July 2008, Auto Trader launched a

.mobi The domain name mobi is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Its name is derived from the adjective ''mobile''. The domain was approved by ICANN on 11 July 2005, and is managed by the mTLD global r ...

site, and in July 2009, they launched separate versions for differing handset capability levels. Auto Trader developed their mobile offering further from March 2010, when they released

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

for users to search for vehicles using a

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

Android device Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of de ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Mass media companies established in 1975 British companies established in 1975 Apax Partners companies Automotive websites Automobile magazines published in the United Kingdom Online magazines published in the United Kingdom Defunct magazines published in the United Kingdom Guardian Media Group Magazines established in 1975 Magazines disestablished in 2013 Mass media companies of England Online magazines with defunct print editions Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange