Mayfield Media Strategies MD Steve Monnington looks at acquisitions made at the end of last year in the world’s hottest exhibition sectors: Energy and sustainability.
In Issue Seven of EW I focused in detail on the current hot markets of Turkey and Brazil. Now it’s the turn of the hot sectors. Energy (in all its forms) and sustainability are the two main areas we are seeing most competition in from purchasers for businesses coming up for sale.
Reed for example, acquired two energy-related businesses in three months. First there was the acquisition of 100 per cent of All-Energy from Media Generation Events in July. All-Energy is the UK’s largest alternative energy exhibition and conference and takes place in Aberdeen, Scotland where Reed already holds Offshore Europe. Media Generation Events is a joint venture between Media Generation Group, the original founders of All-Energy, and Qatar MICE Development Institute which acquired 75 per cent of the exhibition in early 2009. At that time Reed was not in acquisition mode otherwise it may well have become the owner two years earlier.
Reed also acquired the Santos Offshore Oil and Gas Expo in Brazil in September. The event was launched in 2007 but is still in its relative infancy at 7,000sqm net with presumably a lot of potential growth in the pipeline. Earlier in 2011 Reed acquired Multiplus, Brazil’s leading organiser of biofuel events and Clarion acquired Energynet, organiser of the Africa Energy Forum. We expect more energy events to change hands in coming months.
On the sustainability front, UBM acquired International Business Events, organisers of Ecobuild in London to fit into the UBM Built Environment division. David Wood and Moira Edwards have built a fantastic brand that has demonstrated rapid growth over the last few years and become the world’s largest exhibition dedicated to sustainable building products.
Ecobuild has long been on the shopping list of a number of the major organisers and it has taken a hefty price of up to £51m (US$78.74m), including deferred consideration, to unlock it.
This is the largest amount paid for a single show for quite some time and UBM seems to have justified the price with expectations of continued high growth (a doubling in size over the next four years) and a comprehensive geocloning plan covering China, Brazil, India and the UAE.
Earlier this year, Emap announced the cancellation of Interbuild, the long established UK construction event. There has been debate about whether the success of Ecobuild hastened the demise of Interbuild and whether Interbuild could have changed direction and used its mass to create effective competition to Ecobuild.
The consensus was that it is extremely difficult to re-invent such a large exhibition and that Ecobuild had locked onto the fastest growing part of the building sector.
Now let’s see how UBM rolls this brand out into fast growth markets.
Any comments? Email exhibitionworld@mashmedia.net
