German media giant Axel Springer buys control of Business Insider for $343 million - Fortune

Anyone interested in the evolution of media now has a new benchmark when it comes to industry disruption and fluctuating valuations: Business Insider, a site that is only eight years old, has been acquired by German media giant Axel Springer, in a deal that values the company at about $450 million. That’s almost twice what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos paid for the venerable Washington Post newspaper just two years ago.

The price that Business Insider got eclipses the last major U.S. media deal that was an outright acquisition, which was AOL’s purchase of The Huffington Post for $315 million in 2011. But the value it puts on the business news startup — roughly six times next year’s revenues, according to Axel Springer — looks not unreasonable compared with some recent deals involving new-media entities like Vice, Vox Media and BuzzFeed.

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