£1.2bn Bumper Bid On Table for Cannes Lions Owner Ascential
Acquisition is on the cards for Ascential PLC, the owner of brands like Cannes Lions, WARC, Contagious, Money 20/20 and Acuity Pricing after an unsolicited bid from B2B events group Informa.
They’ve offered to acquire the business for £1.2 billion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the board of Ascential has recommended that shareholders accept the offer.
In an email seen by LBB, Phil Thomas, the chief executive of Ascential, spoke of the shared values of Informa and Ascential.
“Informa is a highly credible owner of the businesses, a publicly listed company whose values and culture align to Ascential’s and who, like us, believe in creating magic for their customers. It is a testament to the fantastic brands within Ascential – and most of all the people who create them – that Informa sees such value in the business,” he said.
The news comes just as Informa releases its 2024 half year results, which saw revenue growth of 11.5% for the events and content giant. Informa chief executive Stephen A Carter said, "As the world digitises at pace, our brands, our content and our market positions are becoming more valuable. This is moving Informa into a faster growth lane for performance, expansion and returns, as demonstrated by our full year target of up to £1bn of adjusted operating profit and today’s recommended offer for Ascential plc.”
For now, the deal has not yet been finalised and until it is ratified later in the year, the Ascential team have said that day-to-day operations will continue, ‘business as usual’.
“The impact for the foreseeable future will be minimal, as Ascential continues to trade as a public company until the deal is ratified by our shareholders and the conditions to completion are satisfied,” he said. “This is likely to happen later in the year, and until then it is business as usual for myself and the whole Ascential team," said Phil Thomas.
Informa may not be familiar to many in the advertising and marketing world, but some of the brands that it owns likely will be, as the world's biggest trade show business. It is split between its B2B business, which provides digital services and live events across industries as diverse as healthcare, aviation, cybersecurity and media, and its academic business, under the Taylor & Francis brand, which includes the publisher Routledge.
