FT - Feb 5 - Greg Blatt is talking fast and loud. So loud that, after a while, your ears begin to hurt. But as the CEO of IAC – the company behind Match.com - enthuses about his business, his big voice ricochets around his glass-walled office with a view of the Statue of Liberty. “It’s been a great year,” he booms. Mr Blatt is excited because it has indeed been a good first year on the job. Full-year results, released last week, showed annual revenues up 26% to $2.1bn, with profits up 75% to $174m. He is unmarried – and has even cancelled his subscription to Match.com. “I’m a single guy,” he says. “I have a bunch of friends in the city. I date ladies from time to time.” Blatt helped Diller spin off the companies that didn’t fit, starting with Expedia in 2005, and continuing with Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster and others in 2008. “We disaggregated to a group of businesses that have far more commonality among them,” he says. After six years as general counsel, Mr Blatt was tapped to run Match.com, and in 2010 he took over as CEO. Likewise, he does not see Facebook as a direct competitor. Yet the skyrocketing valuations of internet start-ups, led by that company’s pending IPO, has made it harder for IAC to find acquisition targets to fuel its growth. “I went to law school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “If someone had asked me if I would be working in the internet after law school I would have said: ‘What’s the internet?’”
by David Gelles
See full article at Financial Times
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