Mayfield’s Steve Monnington on the latest international mergers and acquisitions activity.
There was a lot of activity this past month. UBM continued to move its focus away from print publishing with the sale of its UK licensed trade portfolio, along with 14 staff, to William Reed. The deal consists of an initial cash consideration of £1.5m (US$2.42m) and further deferred performance-related considerations of up to £150,000. The portfolio includes The Publican magazine, websites and awards event, together with the Theme and Bar Show brands. UBM originally bought the publications in 2005 from Quantum Business Media for £21m.
UBM rationalised its print portfolio further with the sale of 62.9 per cent of its €40m (US$56.75m) revenue French medical newspaper and magazine business to a management buyout team in a deal valued at €13m including funding of €6m made to the MBO team. The print titles were originally acquired from MediMedia in 2005, together with Hospital Expo and the MEDEC conference for €36m.
On the acquisition side, UBM continues to consolidate its position in India with the acquisition of SATTE, the main travel and tourism show and 60 per cent of the Famdent dental exhibition and conference business. UBM seems to have built a business in India where others have failed and it is particularly interesting to see acquisitions are possible. We constantly receive feedback from purchasers that the price expectations of a number of independent Indian organisers are unrealistic.
Meanwhile Reed has strengthened its market-leading position in Brazil with the acquisition of Sao Paulo organiser Multiplus Fairs and Events. The main events in the portfolio serve the renewable energy sector and are a strategic addition to Reed’s existing events in this sector. The energy sector is pretty busy right now in terms of M&A and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more properties change hands in coming months.
Not content with acquiring MVK in Moscow recently, ITE added to its Russian portfolio by acquiring Krasnodar Expo for the equivalent of £8.8m, a multiple of 4.5 x 2010 profits. Krasnodar Expo runs a number of shows in a variety of sectors including construction, agriculture, travel and tourism and automotive. This is a regional, south-of-Russia play for ITE which already runs its own shows at the Krasnodar Expo Exhibition Centre.
There was a bit of a rumpus in Hong Kong when Sage International (formerly Info Communication) had to explain to the HK Stock Exchange why it has agreed to sell its exhibition business to the original founder, Eddie Leung, for HK$3m (US$384,929) despite being offered HK$6m by Global Sources. Leung originally sold his stake in Info Communication in 2007 for HK$53M.
And finally, talking of buy backs at lower prices, it was interesting to see that Professional Beauty in the UK achieved a 50 per cent increase in visitors in the first show since Mark Moloney re-acquired the show from Emap.
Any comments? Email exhibitionworld@mashmedia.net
