Gus, the owner of Argos and Homebase, has acquired shopping comparison site PriceGrabber.com for $485m. PriceGrabber will be incorporated into Gus' Internet division Experian.

PriceGrabber.com has 17 million users in the US where it is based. The site allows shoppers to compare prices on hundreds of thousands of items from more than 9,000 retailers.

Experian has acquired 9 businesses this year, which have helped it to increase profits by 36 per cent.