B2B Consolidation: Informa and UBM In Early Merger Talks
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
United Business Media and Informa, two of the biggest B2B media companies, are in talks for a merger, the two companies said over the weekend after news of the talks leaked. There is no certainty the deal will happen at this stage. Informa has a market value of 1.64 billion pounds ($3.2 billion), while UBM has a market value of 1.48 billion pounds.
The two UK-based companies have been buying and rolling up smaller companies over the years, in the exhibitions, online distribution and business-information units, as their print revenues have been declining. Informa publishes more than 2,000 titles and organizes more than 10,000 conferences annually..it bought market research firm Datamonitor, and also runs the big Mobile World Congress (fka 3GSM) conference, among others. UBM used to own CMP, which was recently broken down into five companies...it also owns PRNewswire.
By Rafat Ali