The value of moneysupermarket.com jumped almost £75 million yesterday after a takeover approach for the price comparison website.

Simon Nixon, the founder of moneysupermarket.com, saw the value of his 54 per cent stake in the company increase by £40 million despite rejecting the proposal, which he said did not include indicative terms.

It was not clear last night who had made the proposal to Mr Nixon, although private equity bidders were thought to be most likely.

The approach was read as a further sign that interest in British financial services was returning, after buyers battened down during the credit crunch.

On Tuesday, Paragon, the buy-to-let lender, said that it was in talks with a number of potential acquirers.

Meanwhile, Santander, the Spanish bank, has made a £1.3 billion offer for Alliance & Leicester and HBOS shares soared yesterday by 16 per cent to 305p amid a rumour that BBVA, a Spanish bank, was considering an offer.

Moneysupermarket.com is paid a commission by providers of financial and other products that it lists on its website after customers click through from the site to make a purchase.

Shares in the website soared by 45 per cent to 101p each, before closing more than 22 per cent higher at 84p. The value of the company hit £417 million.

This is still more than 50 per cent below moneysupermarket.com's 170p-per-share float price when it came to market last July. The site's shares floated at the bottom of its expected price range amid difficult market conditions. The £170 million raised was used to pay down debt that had been issued to buy out Duncan Cameron, moneysupermarket's co-founder.

The decision by Barclay's First Plus brand, the personal loan provider that had been fronted by Carol Vorderman, to stop accepting new business from August hit the website, knocking £7 million from its 2008 revenue.

Trading in the rest of the business, which covers holidays to mobile phone contracts, was in line with expectations, moneysupermarket.com said.

Mr Nixon set up the website after dropping out of his course at Nottingham University to sell financial products. He noticed that there was a lack of comparison tools for financial advisers, so set up a magazine called Brokers Update.

When, after two years, subscriptions slowed, he convinced Mr Cameron to leave university and use his IT knowledge to build a program to compare the rates on financial products to cater to advisers' growing taste for online information.

Five years later, the pair developed moneysupermarket.com aimed at consumers. It was launched in 1999 but Mr Nixon and Mr Cameron fell out and have not spoken since 2001. Mr Cameron remained a silent partner in the business until last year.

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