Henry Blodget’s Business Insider sold to Axel Springer for $343 million

They couldn’t get the Financial Times, so they settled for Business Insider.

German publisher Axel Springer, whose push into English-language business news was delayed earlier this year when it lost an auction for Pearson PLC’s FT, said Tuesday it will buy an additional 88 percent stake in Henry Blodget’s 8-year-old Business Insider for $343 million.

The deal, which takes Axel Springer’s stake in the digital news company to 97 percent, values BI at $390 million — or $442 million including debt.

The remaining 3 percent stake in BI, which has 325 employees and attracts 76 million monthly visitors, is owned by Jeff Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment vehicle of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com.

“This acquisition is a vital part of Axel Springer’s strategy to broaden its global reach, diversify its English-language offerings and expand its commitment to innovative digital journalism,” the company said.

The German media giant, which owns the daily broadsheet newspaper Die Welt and the tabloid Bild, the largest-circulation paper in Europe with 2.5 million copies sold every day, is not alone in the digital news acquisition front.

NBCUniversal last month invested $200 million in BuzzFeed after picking up a stake in Vox Media.

Axel Springer previously forged a partnership with Politico.com and launched a European version of the popular political news site.

Both Blodget, the former Wall Street tech analyst who serves as BI’s editor-in-chief, and COO Julie Hansen will remain in their jobs.

In July, Axel Springer lost an auction to buy the FT when Pearson agreed to sell the salmon-colored daily to Nikkei, Japan’s largest media company, for $1.3 billion.