London & Boston, 20 May 2008: Cheapflights Ltd. ("Cheapflights"), a leading UK and North American internet media travel company, which pioneered online flight price search and comparison in 1996, announces the appointment of Rick Medlock to the Board as Non-Executive Director with immediate effect.
Mr Medlock, who is currently Chief Financial Officer of Inmarsat Plc, the LSE-listed mobile satellite communications company, will Chair the Audit Committee of the Cheapflights Board. He brings over 25 years experience in senior and board level financial positions in private equity funded and public companies in Europe and the US. Mr. Medlock’s previous roles include CFO of NDS, the leading pay-TV technology company, and CFO of Policy Management Systems, a leading insurance software provider. He also chairs the Audit Committee and is a non-executive director of Thus plc, the alternative network telecom operator. A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, Rick qualified with Arthur Andersen in 1985. He graduated in 1982 from St Johns’s College, Cambridge with a BA in economics.
In his previous roles Rick has completed numerous M&A and capital raising deals, including IPO’s on the LSE, NASDAQ and EASDAQ and has lead subsequent international investor relations activities.
"We are very fortunate to have Rick apply his talents to the Board,” said Chris Cuddy, CEO Cheapflights. “His experience as a CFO in private and public international technology companies is hugely relevant to our strategy of growth and international expansion. I look forward to working with Rick."
"I join with Chris Cuddy and the rest of the Board in welcoming Rick to Cheapflights,” said John Clare, Non-Executive Chairman. “We are very fortunate in having him join the Board as Head of the Audit Committee. His qualifications and experience, as well as his well documented energy will be a considerable asset to Cheapflights and our Board.”
Rick Medlock added “I am delighted to be joining Cheapflights at a very exciting time in its development and look forward to helping it deliver continued growth.”
Cheapflights Ltd.: www.cheapflights.co.uk was launched in 1996. It pioneered the concept of online flight price search and comparison and has been consistently profitable since launch. It was the first UK dotcom to introduce pay-per-click in 2000, which helped to transform online advertising. Cheapflights publishes flight deals from airlines, budget airlines, online travel agents and the long tail of other specialist flight deal providers. Cheapflights therefore provides consumers with rapid, easy to use comparisons of approximately one million flight deals each day from the broadest online selection of travel operators. The site is valued by travel industry advertisers as a neutral, high-traffic source of quality high-conversion consumer leads. It launched its US site www.cheapflights.com in May 2003, which has rapidly grown and which now provides half of Cheapflights' millions of monthly visits by consumers. Its Canadian site www.cheapflights.ca, which was soft launched in April 2007, is already enjoying traffic of over 180,000 monthly visits. Cheapflights' status as an independent online travel price search and comparison and travel news site makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information on both sides of the Atlantic.
