Spin or a bit of leakage at Cheapflights?

Nice bit of trickery perhaps in the Financial Times this morning regarding Cheapflights.

The article says the big daddy of the price comparison world will make a decision in the next few weeks on whether it will float in 2008.

The company has declined to comment on the story.

Cheapflights has stated publicly that a floatation, sale or private equity investment would be likely going forward, rather than the status quo (which isn't bad, to be fair - it's been profitable since Day One) - moving earlier this year to appoint Long Acre Partners as financial advisors.

Anyway the dreaded "person close to the situation" has told the the FT the Cheapflights’ management will “come back in January and start to make some decisions based on the markets”.

So this latest twist is either 1) a rather unfortunate leak or 2) a classic piece of Square Mile PR to get the City warmed up before the Christmas break over a potential deal or floatation.

By remarkable coincidence the FT reports how Cheapflights is "expected" to announce the appointment of the Maitland corporate PR consultancy.

UPDATE: Maitland is the new corp PR agency for Cheapflights.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

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