Euromoney Institutional Investor acquires a majority stake in the Centre for Investor Education in Australia

Euromoney logoEuromoney Institutional Investor PLC, the international online information and events group has acquired  a 75% stake in the Centre for Investor Education (CIE).

Based in Melbourne, Australia, CIE was founded in 1997 and is a provider of investment forums for senior CIEexecutives of superannuation funds and global asset management firms.  Principal events include the Chief Investment Officers Symposium and the Major Market Players Symposium, both held annually in Australia, as well as the International Investing Symposium which was held in Tokyo earlier this month.  CIE was acquired in 2010 from its founder, Melda Donnelly, by Erling Sorensen and Jamie Nemtsas who have expanded its portfolio of events and will remain shareholders in CIE until December 2015.

The acquisition is expected to be earnings enhancing for Euromoney in financial year 2013. Euromoney has paid an initial A$14.4 million (£9.9 million) cash consideration for a 75% interest in CIE, to be adjusted up or down dependent on CIE’s results for the year to December 2013.  Euromoney will acquire the remaining 25% of CIE’s equity in two instalments based on CIE’s profits for the years to December 2014 and 2015.  The acquisition will be funded from Euromoney’s existing committed borrowing facility.  CIE recorded an unaudited pre-tax profit of A$1.5million (£1.0 million) on revenues of A$4.3 million (£2.9 million) for the year to December 2012.

“We are delighted to acquire CIE,” said Richard Ensor, Chairman of Euromoney.  “Euromoney expects to benefit from the rapid growth of Australia’s asset management industry.  This acquisition of the high-quality CIE business gives us the opportunity to consolidate further our position in this premium segment of the events market.  We look forward to working with Erling Sorensen and Jamie Nemtsas to develop CIE further.”

UK, London & Australia, Melbourne

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Thomson CompuMark acquires the trademark business of Onscope

compumarkThomson CompuMark, a Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property & Science business has acquired the trademark business of Onscope, a provider of trademark searching, monitoring and online screening in Canada. The terms of the deal was not disclosed. Onscope’s search support services for the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and its linguistics and translation services were not included.

Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Onscope is a  provider of trademark search and watch services offered in French and English.

“The addition of Onscope’s trademark business to our IP Solutions portfolio solidifies Thomson CompuMark as the preeminent source ofonscope trademark research and protection offerings across Canada,” said Viji Krishnan , vice president of Thomson CompuMark. “Onscope’s clients will benefit from the extensive trademark expertise Thomson CompuMark provides, including access to the world’s largest, global network of trademark data, around-the-clock service throughout the business week, and a host of offerings to drive brand value and protect intangible assets.”

USA, North Quincy, MA & Canada, Montreal, Quebec

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IHS acquires Fekete Associates

ihs_logo_mpInformation and analytics company IHS Inc. , has acquired Fekete Associates, a provider of integrated reservoir management software and services to the oil and gas industry. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The acquisition of Fekete plays an important role in better supporting our customers as we continue to seamlessly connect IHS information and expertise with the right tools and technologies linked to key energy workflows,” said IHS Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jerre Stead. “The products and services offered by Fekete build on existing IHS Energy solutions and provide new opportunity to expand Fekete offerings to a high-growth global energy marketplace.”

Fekete is a provider of integrated reservoir and production engineering tools and workflow solutions to the oil and natural gas exploration and production industry. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and with an office in Houston, the company’s digital solutions help customers find and develop new oil and gas reserves, and optimize production from new and existing assets by processing, analyzing, interpreting and modeling digital subsurface information.

“Combining Fekete workflow tools with IHS Energy information will create new efficiencies for customers and speed time to decisions in exploration and production. In a very dynamic global energy environment, providing integrated solutions that improve productivity and allow an even greater level of insight in making investment decisions is a great outcome for our customers and for IHS,” said IHS President and Chief Operating Officer Scott Key.

USA, Englewood, CO & Canada, Calgary, Alberta

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Euromoney Institutional Investor to acquire HSBC’s Quantitative Techniques operation

Euromoney logoEuromoney Institutional Investor PLC is to acquire HSBC’s Quantitative Techniques operation.  QT is the benchmark and calculation agent business of HSBC Bank plc and creates and maintains more than 100 equity and bond indices for HSBC’s Global Markets division as well as over 60 external clients. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Completion of the sale will take place after a transition phase, which is expected to take six months.  Once the transaction has completed, HSBC has agreed to purchase index calculation services from QT for a minimum period of three years.

Euromoney believes the acquisition creates an opportunity to build a new business providing independent index compilation services.  Over more than 40 years Euromoney has built strong relationships with financial institutions which should help expand QT’s customer base and encourage other institutions to engage QT to calculate the indices for their own investable index products.  Euromoney also plans to use QT’s index calculation expertise to develop new index families across other parts of its business.

“We are delighted to acquire the Quantitative Techniques operation from HSBC,” said Richard Ensor, chairman of Euromoney.  “HSBC is a trusted and important partner as well as a key client.  Euromoney looks forward to working with HSBC over the next three years and, it hopes, for many years afterwards to develop the QT business.  This acquisition gives Euromoney the opportunity to establish a significant footprint in the attractive index compilation market.”

UK, London

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Experian acquires Decisioning Solutions

experianExperian has acquired Decisioning Solutions Inc., a provider of a hosted SaaS customer acquisition platform.

Founded in 2004 and based in Canada, Decisioning Solutions provides SaaS solutions to small and mid-tier companies, including financial institutions and telecommunication companies in the US and Canada, to manage their customer acquisitions and loan originations. Decisioning Solutions’ products are multi-lingual and easily deployed to different geographies.

Customer acquisition and origination is a key sector for Experian globally and this acquisition provides Experian with a scalable, cross-industry global platform to complement its existing mid- and large-tier, on-premise and country specific solutions.

It is a further step in Experian’s strategy to extend its global lead in credit information and analytics and will form part of Experian’s Decision Analytics activities. The acquisition has been funded from Experian’s existing cash resources

UK, London & USA, New York, NY & Canada, Toronto

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McGraw-Hill completes the sale of McGraw-Hill Education to Apollo

McgrawhilleducationThe McGraw-Hill Companies has completed the sale of its McGraw-Hill Education business to investment funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management, LLC. The purchase price was $2.4 billion in cash.

Previous reporting.

The McGraw-Hill Companies will be renamed McGraw Hill Financial in the second quarter of this year and will focus on serving the global capital and commodity markets

The Company is using a portion of the approximately $1.9 billion in after tax proceeds from the sale to pay down short-term debt, in part driven by the special dividend paid in 2012, to resume share repurchases and to make selective tuck-in acquisitions.

“Consistent with our commitment to maximizing shareholder value, McGraw Hill Financial expects to continue to return cash to shareholders and to invest for growth,” said Harold McGraw III , Chairman, President and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies. “We have successfully completed our Growth and Value Plan, which had as its cornerstone the separation of our financial information and education businesses. The steps we have taken have unlocked value for shareholders, positioned the assets of McGraw-Hill Education for long-term success and accelerated the growth potential of the new McGraw Hill Financial.”

USA, New York, NY

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Euromoney Institutional Investor acquires Insider Publishing

Euromoney logoEuromoney Institutional Investor PLC is expanding its insurance and reinsurance business with the acquisition of Insider Publishing Limited.

Euromoney has paid an initial £16.8 million for Insider Publishing, funded from its existing committed borrowing facility.  It expects to make an additional deferred consideration payment in 2015 based on the growth in profits of Insurance Insider from 2012 to the average of the 2013 and 2014 calendar years.  Insider Publishing recorded an unaudited pre-tax profit of £2.1 million on revenues of £4.7 million for the year to December 2012.

Insider Publishing, set up by former Lloyd’s insurance underwriter Peter Hastie in 2000, is a leading information source for the Insurance insiderinternational insurance and reinsurance markets.  Its business model is centred on trusted, premium subscription content served through The Insurance Insider, the non-life insurance and reinsurance online news service, and a number of other specialist titles, all providing senior industry professionals and advisers with insight and intelligence on the London and international insurance and reinsurance markets.  Insider Publishing also runs a series of events including The Insurance Insider Honours awards dinner and the London One Hundredforum for senior executives of the London insurance market.

“We are delighted to acquire Insider Publishing,” said Richard Ensor, chairman of Euromoney. “Euromoney expects the international non-life insurance and reinsurance markets to remain major consumers of business information.  The acquisition gives Euromoney the opportunity to build critical mass in these markets and it will continue to run the two complementary brands, Reactions and The Insurance Insider, side by side.”

UK, London

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PennWell acquires the Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference from Willbros Engineers

PennwellPennWell Corporation has acquired the Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference from Willbros Engineers and entered into an agreement with the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) to produce the annual conference and exhibition. The 22nd annual Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference will be held October 28-30, 2013 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Houston. Terms of the agreements with Willbros and GITA were not disclosed.

GITA founded the Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference in 1991 and developed the conference into an important technical event for the oil and gas pipeline sector. For the October 2012 Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference, GITA partnered with Willbros Engineers to conduct the event as GITA completed its transition to an all-volunteer organisation. Over 350 industry professionals attended the October 2012 Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference in Houston, which also had 55 exhibitors and sponsors. The annual event includes multiple conferences and networking sessions.

Robert F. Biolchini , president and CEO of PennWell, said, “We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with GITA with the goal of rapidly accelerating the growth of the Oil & Gas Pipeline Conference and we also look forward to the ongoing support of Willbros and other sponsors of the event. The pipeline and transportation sectors of the industry are experiencing phenomenal growth due to the resurgence of exploration and drilling in North America, and we intend to leverage PennWell’s publishing assets and event expertise of our editorial staff of the Oil & Gas Journal, Offshore, and Oil & Gas Financial Journal in a close collaboration with GITA to expand the conference and preserve the standard of quality in conference content established by GITA over the last 21 years.”

PennWell’s portfolio of conferences and exhibitions also includes Deep Offshore Technology (DOT), Offshore Middle East, Offshore Asia, Offshore West Africa, PetroWorld India, and Oil Sands Heavy Oil Technologies in Canada. PennWell publishes Oil & Gas Journal.

Tulsa, OK

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Wilmington Group acquires Spanish information and events Inese

wilmington-logoWilmington Group plc has acquired the trading assets of Inese, the provider of information and events to the insurance industry in Spain, from Reed Business Information for a net consideration of €1.4m in cash. The consideration will be financed out of the Group’s existing £65m multicurrency debt facility.

Inese was established in 1892 and was acquired by RBI in 2000. Inese is a leading provider of Spanish language subscription based inesepublications, online services for the Spanish Insurance Industry along with a number of annual events including the leading industry congress; “Insurance Week”. Inese also operates a digital news service in Latin America.

Approximately 40% of Inese’s revenue is derived from subscriptions, and a further 30% from annual awards and events. Throughout the last 3 years revenue has been stable and the business has enjoyed overall renewal rates on its subscription base of around 90%. Approximately 30% of total revenue is delivered digitally. In the year to 31stDecember 2012 Inese made a profit before taxation of €0.7m*1 and had gross assets of €0.8m.

The Business will form part of the Wilmington Pensions and Insurance Division and will work closely with the Axco insurance information business, providing Axco with access to Spanish language insurance markets.

UK, London & Spain, Madrid

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Oil Price Information Service acquires mobile app and website GasBuddy

opisPetroleum pricing and news information business Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) has acquired mobile app and website GasBuddy. OPIS is a wholly owned subsidiary of UCG. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

OPIS and GasBuddy are long-term data partners, together producing the a real-time database of retail fuel prices at over 130,000 gasstations and convenience stores in the US and Canada. gasbuddy_logo

“Through our combined resources, consumers will have the very best retail fuel prices, tools and information to save money at the pump,” said OPIS CEO Brian Crotty. “I look forward to working shoulder-to-shoulder with Dustin Coupal and Jason Toews, co-founders of GasBuddy, and their talented staff,” he added.

OPIS say they will accelerate investment in GasBuddy’s “OpenStore” software, which enables convenience stores to reach their customers with highly targeted value offerings.

USA, Gaithersburg, MD & Brooklyn Park, MN

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