Steve Monnington of Mayfield Mergers casts his eye over the M&A landscape.
There were 14 transactions involving 11 different buyers announced over the last two months since the last Dealmakers column. The majority of them were small single shows, primarily being sold by entrepreneurs although there were some strategic moves by some of the major players.
Although not a done deal, Italian Exhibition Group (IEG) intends to acquire 50% of Deutsche Messe’s companies in Mexico, Canada, and the USA. Deutsche Messe has eight shows in Mexico of which two - Mexico Active & Sports for the fitness sector and Ecomondo Mexico for the green technologies sector, are already run in partnership with IEG, being two of IEG’s core sectors.
The other six shows that will join the JV include Solar Power, Industrial Transformation, Agrotech and World Seafood. The Canadian business includes ETC Electricity Transformation and the USA business includes a geoclone of the broad-based industrial event Hannover Messe show.
IEG has already been active in 2022 acquiring the Brasil Trading Fitness Fair as well as 75% of V Group, organiser of the Myplant & Garden exhibition for the horticultural-floricultural and gardening sector and this joint venture accelerates their expansion into Mexico as well as providing a gateway to North America. IEG was formed in 2016 through the merger of the Rimini and Vicenza fairgrounds and, as well as Italy and Mexico, also operates in Brazil, Dubai and China.
Hyve continued with the rationalisation of their non-core business with the sale of their 50% stake in Debindo ITE, organiser of Indobuildtech in Jakarta, Indonesia. Hyve originally acquired the stake in 2014 and has sold it back to their local partner Debindo who now takes back full control of the business.
Despite the high level of M&A activity over the last two months, the major UK-based organisers have been rather quiet with little M&A news from RX Global, Informa, Tarsus etc. Clarion broke the silence this month with the acquisition of Digital Insurance Agenda (DIA), a European event series serving the Insuretech market with festivals in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Munich together with content platforms that include DIA TV.
This is a synergistic addition to InsureTech Connect, a Las Vegas-based event which was acquired by Clarion in 2019 and which has been geo-cloned into Singapore.
Here at Mayfield Towers, we are very busy with several transactions on the go and regular inbound enquiries from entrepreneurs who have weathered the Covid storm and run a good first edition of their show post-pandemic. Our message to entrepreneurs is to be patient and to take time to get back to at least 2019 levels of profitability – this way there can be confidence from the buyers that the business is back on a sustainable footing and this will be reflected in the valuations by the buyers.
In general, buyers are being very particular about the types of businesses they acquire. With many smaller businesses coming to market, and focus on the events and synergies with the buyer has become more crucial.
