Mayfield Media’s Steve Monnington on the latest international mergers and acquisitions activity.
The year 2010 finished with a number of interesting acquisitions and for once, none of them involved UBM.
The big news was the purchase of MVK by ITE for €33m (£27.67m), making ITE the biggest organiser in Russia. The portfolio of shows taking place in Moscow includes furniture, packaging, pumps and measurement, printing and woodworking and takes ITE into a number of new sectors, which presumably, it can now replicate into its other core geographic markets.
Reed Exhibitions bought a majority stake in the China Golf Show, one of the biggest golf shows in mainland China. It’s a relatively small show – around 300 exhibitors – and complements the PGA Merchandise Show organised in partnership by Reed and the PGA. It is interesting that this is the second acquisition by Reed in the last couple of months and both have been small strategic add-ons. When the economic crisis hit, Reed stopped making acquisitions, unlike a number of other organisers who continued to make small strategic purchases. It will be interesting to see if this renewed interest continues.
Meanwhile in the UK, Clarion Events acquired network telecommunications event organiser Avren Events. In 2011 Avren will organise about 10 strategic telecoms confexes in the UK, Singapore and the US. Clarion has been quietly developing its conference business in cards and payments, gaming, energy and media and the acquisition of Avren means that Clarion will now add telecoms as a fifth main sector with more than 20 events worldwide.
A couple of months ago, I mentioned in this column that Africa would be one of the markets to watch for future business development. It seems that Sandy and Damion Angus of Montgomery Worldwide shared my views and have now decided to make it easier for other international organisers who want to launch their brands there.
Montgomery Africa (Pty) Ltd, based in Johannesburg, is specifically designed to work with international companies with established brands which they want to launch into South Africa and, in some cases, the wider African market. It is often both daunting and uneconomic for organisers to launch one or two brands into a new market and Montgomery’s infrastructure and expertise should allow less experienced organisers to take the plunge.
Finally, what can we expect in 2011 on the M&A front? It is clear we will continue to see investment in markets such as Brazil and Turkey and this will also mean a number of new organisers entering these geographies. We should also see the start of acquisition activity in Mexico, other parts of Latin America and Africa.
Multiples are starting to increase and I believe we will see the return of some larger deals – 2010 was notable for producing only one sizeable acquisition when UBM bought Canon Communications. And of course there are always the continuing rumours about Reed to keep us ready for the mega deal.
