LendingTree

LendingTree is the largest online lending marketplace in the United States. It connects borrowers with multiple lenders so they can find the best deals on loans, credit cards, deposit accounts, insurance and more. LendingTree allows borrowers to shop and compare competitive rates and terms across an array of financial products. Founded in 1996 and launched nationally two years later, the company is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, Seattle and others.[4]

LendingTree, Inc.
Type of businessPublic
Traded as
Founded1996 (1996)
HeadquartersCharlotte, North Carolina, United States
Owner
  • Liberty Interactive (25.8%)[1]
  • Doug Lebda (18.9%)[1]
Founder(s)Doug Lebda
Key peopleDoug Lebda (CEO)
Neil Salvage (President)
John David Moriarty (CFO)
Revenue$1,106 million (2019)
$765 million (2018)[2]
Employees909 (2019)
URLlendingtree.com
Alexa rank 13,043 (June 2020)[3]

LendingTree also provides financing tools, comparative loan searches and borrowing information.[5]

History

Founding

After graduating from Bucknell University, Doug Lebda went to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Pittsburgh as an auditor and consultant. When he decided to purchase his first home and obtain a mortgage, he found the process of visiting multiple banks and combing through mortgage offers frustrating, time-consuming, and exhausting. Lebda realized that if the process was that difficult for someone with his financial acumen, then there must be a massive market of others with the same desire for a better way. With this idea, Doug founded CreditSource USA in 1996, and the new company was later rebranded as LendingTree and by 1998, LendingTree launched nationally online with its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.[6][7]

IAC Ownership

LendingTree went through a successful initial public offering (IPO) on February 15, 2000.

In May 2003, LendingTree, LLC, was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp, former owner of Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network and current owner of Match.com. In 2004, LendingTree acquired HomeLoanCenter.com and formed LendingTree Loans.[8]

After five years, LendingTree spun off from IAC to join newly established Tree.com, Inc. Tree.com was the parent company of several brands and businesses in the financial services and real estate industries including LendingTree.com; GetSmart.com; DegreeTree.com; LendingTreeAutos.com; and DoneRight.com.[9]

In 2015, LendingTree disassembled the Tree.com umbrella to focus on its core brand, LendingTree, which now incorporates business loans, personal loans, debt consolidation, free credit scores, and student loans along with its core mortgage products home loans, mortgage refinance, and home equity.[10]

Acquisitions

In June 2016, LendingTree kicked off a streak of several corporate development deals with the acquisition of SimpleTuition, a company in the student loans space.[11] Subsequent acquisitions include CompareCards (2016),[12] DepositAccounts.com (2017),[13] MagnifyMoney (2017),[14] SnapCap[15] (2017), Student Loan Hero[16] (2018), QuoteWizard [17] (2018), and ValuePenguin[18] (2018).

In November 2016, LendingTree announced plans to invest $47 million and double the employee base of its Charlotte headquarters over the following five years. The company's corporate expansion would create 314 jobs during that time span.[19] In April 2019, LendingTree announced a shift from its previously announced expansion in Charlotte's South Park neighborhood, to instead move to a brand new office building in Charlotte's South End, being developed by The Spectrum Companies.[20]

See also

References
  1. "LENDINGTREE INC (TREE)". Retrieved 2016-10-18.
  2. "LENDINGTREE INC (TREE)2019 10K filing". Retrieved 2020-05-14.
  3. "lendingtree.com Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic - Alexa". alexa.com. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  4. "LendingTree - 1-800-675-5153". LendingTree. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
  5. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lendingtree-reinvents-borrowers-shop-money-133000433.html
  6. Goldberg, Steve (2014-08-03). "LendingTree: An original dot-com darling grows up". CNBC. Retrieved 2018-05-01.
  7. "LendingTree Is Booming, and Its Stock Soaring, As More Borrowers Shop Online".
  8. Sherter, Alaine (2010-01-07). "Mortgage Entrepreneur Anthony Hsieh Says He's No Predator and Plans to Prove It". CBS News. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
  9. "Our Roots - Timeline". LendingTree.com.
  10. "Tree.com, Inc. Changes Corporate Name to LendingTree, Inc". www.prnewswire.com.
  11. "Valore - Crunchbase". Crunchbase.
  12. "CompareCards - Crunchbase". Crunchbase.
  13. "DepositAccounts.com". Crunchbase.
  14. "MagnifyMoney". Crunchbase.
  15. "SnapCap - Crunchbase". Crunchbase.
  16. "LendingTree, Inc. Announces Agreement to Acquire Student Loan Hero". Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  17. "LendingTree (TREE) Acquires QuoteWizard.com for $370.2M".
  18. Research, Zacks Investment. "LendingTree (TREE) to Acquire ValuePenguin.com for $105M". Zacks Investment Research. Retrieved 2018-12-27.
  19. "LendingTree to add more than 300 jobs in Charlotte HQ expansion". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2018-05-01.
  20. "LendingTree will move its headquarters to a new tower in another part of Charlotte". Retrieved 2019-08-07.
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