LexisNexis acquires Enclarity

enclarityLexisNexis Risk Solutions has acquired Enclarity, a health care provider data and information solutions company.

LexisNexis will add Enclarity’s health care provider data to its existing analytics platforms and workflows. The acquisition follows the transfer of clinical-analytics-focused MEDai into LexisNexis Risk Solutions from LexisNexis sister company Elsevier in July 2013 and the autumn 2012 purchase of EDIWatch, a provider of fraud, waste and abuse technology solutions.

“This acquisition demonstrates our continued commitment to helping health care organizations address cost-containment head-on by improving effectiveness and efficiencies, applying clinical analytics and reducing costs and offering greater identity transparency,” said Lee Rivas, CEO Public Sector and Health Care.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

USA, Georgia, GA

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H.I.G. Capital acquires Brazilian outdoor advertising firm Eletromidia

higPrivate investment firm H.I.G. Capital, LLC, through its Brazilian affiliate, has acquired a majority stake in Eletromidia, one of the largest players in the out-of-home advertising industry in Brazil.

Founded in 1993, Eletromidia manages urban furniture, digital outdoor displays and indoor networks across 18 cities. The two founders will retain a significant ownership and will continue in their positions of leading the Company. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

electromediaFernando Marques Oliveira, Managing Director and Head of H.I.G. Brasil and H.I.G. Latin America, added, “Eletromidia is a unique asset with a spectacular team and growth prospects. We are excited to support management in Eletromidia’s next expansion phase, developing new advertising solutions and positively impacting the entire industry.”

About Eletromidia

Eletromidia offers innovative advertising solutions through a network of static and digital panels in high traffic indoor and outdoor locations. Present in 18 cities across Brazil, the Company reaches over 6 million people daily. Eletromidia also develops full-fledged display and lighting solutions for major events. For more information, please refer to the Eletromidia website at

About H.I.G. Capital

H.I.G. is a leading global private equity investment firm with more than $13 billion of equity capital under management. Based in Miami, and with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and San Francisco in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro, H.I.G. specializes in providing capital to small and medium-sized companies with attractive growth potential. H.I.G. invests in management-led buyouts and recapitalizations of profitable and well managed manufacturing or service businesses. H.I.G. also has extensive experience with financial restructurings and operational turnarounds. Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. invested in and managed more than 200 companies worldwide. The firm’s current portfolio includes more than 80 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at .

Brazil, Rio de Janeiro

Groupon acquires last-minute travel app Blink

grouponGroupon has acquired last-minute travel app Blink, a travel app dealing in discounted same-day bookings for European hotels. The deal will help bolster Groupon’s Getaways travel business. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We are very excited to welcome the Blink team to the Groupon family,” said Aaron Cooper, senior vice president of Groupon Getaways. “The combination of a fantastic mobile app, same-day inventory management for properties and a team that is obsessed with mobile and last-minute travel will help us further expand our travel business as the go-to destination for great deals on great places to stay.”

The Blink app will be rebranded “Blink by Groupon” and will operate separately from the Groupon parent business.

USA, Chicago, IL

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Livefyre acquires social storytelling platform Storify

livefyreLivefyre has acquired Storify, the drag-and-drop storytelling tool. Livefyre will integrate Storify into its StreamHub platform.

Founded in 2010, Storify was created to help journalists sift through the massive amounts of social content around news events to create multimedia stories that can be embedded anywhere. PR agencies use the social curation tool to hand-select social content for websites, microsites and advertising campaigns. Storify is  used by nearly one million journalists, agencies and brands to tell stories online, including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, EA Sports, Ford, GE, HBO, IBM, Microsoft, Marc Jacobs, Samsung, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

storify“Acquiring Storify made perfect sense,” said Jordan Kretchmer, founder and CEO of Livefyre. “Livefyre powers social media and user engagement on the largest media properties and brands on the web. Storify also delivers a unique and vital curation tool for journalists and editors at many of those same companies. Now our enterprise users will be able to manage Storify content from the same centralized Livefyre dashboard where they’re already managing all of their social and user-generated content. With the addition of Storify, StreamHub is now the only real-time platform that enables both editorial and automated content curation from all the major social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.”

Storify currently offers three levels of service to its users: Free, Business and VIP. With this acquisition, the Storify Free product will continue to be offered as it is now. The teams will merge Storify’s multiple paid tiers into a single enterprise offering that will include additional new features such as single sign-on to create stories, centralised story and editor management, Storify galleries, user participation tools, automated media filtering and engagement analytics.

Storify co-founder Burt Herman added: “We created Storify to unite journalism and social media, helping to tell stories that come alive with eyewitness reports from where news is happening. Joining Livefyre means our users, including journalists and now brands and agencies, will be able to integrate social media easily across their websites, and also into mobile apps, ads and TV broadcasts. We can now also help publishers make more revenue through native ads.”

Co-founders Xavier Damman and Burt Herman will join the Livefyre team, along with Storify employees from product, engineering and support. Damman will continue to oversee the Storify product, and Herman will lead relations for all of Livefyre’s editorial users and partners.

Storify becomes the first acquisition by Livefyre since its founding in 2009.

USA, San Francisco, CA

Artemis Energy Holdings to acquire WooEB.com

wooeb-logoArtemis Energy Holdings the owner of press release distribution site TransWorldNews and business social networking platform LinkMyStock.com, is to acquire WooEB.com. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

WooEB.com is an online social networking portal that provides members the ability to manage their online content. WooEB.com currently is ranked according to Alexa Global Rank 45,935.

Tom Powers of Artemis Energy Holdings stated “With the addition of WooEB.com and the revenue streams it provides I think this acquisition will enhance the overall portfolio of Artemis Energy Holdings for our shareholders.”

USA, Atlanta, GA

Centaur Media plc – full year results

centaurCentaur Media plc, the business information, events and marketing services group, has published its full year results for the year to 30 June 2013.

Financial highlights

  • Adjusted EBITDA up 10% to £12.9m (2012: £11.7m)
  • Adjusted profit before tax up 8% to £8.6m (2012: £8.0m)
  • Reported loss before tax of £37.4m (2012: profit £2.7m) includes a non-cash impairment charge of £39.2m (2012: £nil)
  • Adjusted basic EPS up 7% to 4.5p (2012: 4.2p) with a proposed full year dividend of 2.4p (up 7%)
  • Cash conversion remains strong at 112% (2012: 120%)

Operational highlights

  • Revenue mix continues to improve
    • Digital contribution increased to 35%, paid-for content 28% and events 36%
    • Advertising revenues reduced as planned to 35% of total revenues
  • Refocus around market segments driving greater focus on delivery of revenue and cost synergies

The acquisition of Econsultancy.com Limited was completed in July 2012, Centaur reported that the integration is accelerating.

Note: The Econsultancy sale was a Fusion Corporate Partners deal. Fusion represented the shareholders of Econsultancy.

centaur results 13

Click on the table to enlarge the view

 

Mark Kerswell, Interim Chief Executive, commented, “We have continued to improve our revenue and earnings profile as well as accelerate the delivery of our strategic objectives. We now have a sharper focus on markets and customers and a strong pipeline of new digital platforms and event launches. We are better placed to exploit fully the numerous opportunities across the Group. “Our digital, subscription and events businesses are growing well, whilst our print, advertising funded businesses are stable. With deferred revenues up 27%, the outlook for 2014 is positive.”

UK, London

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Ogilvy & Mather acquires a majority stake in PennyWise

wppWPP’s wholly owned operating company Ogilvy & Mather is to acquire a majority stake in PennyWise Solutions Pvt. Ltd. , a digital technology and production company in India. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2003 and based in Hyderabad, PennyWise offers a wide range of digital services, including custom application development, mobile application development, SEO, digital listening, online consumer response management systems, data analytics and business intelligence, network support and infrastructure management services.

PennyWise employs more than 140 people. The agency had unaudited revenues of INR 119.2 million, for the year ending March 2013, and gross assets of INR 68.3 million, at the same date. PennyWise clients include Vodafone India, Johnson & Johnson, and LIN Digital.

UK, London & India, Hyderabad

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E.On to acquire UK energy management and efficiency firm Matrix

German utility E.On has agreed to acquire UK energy management and efficiency firm Matrix. the terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction needs the go-ahead from Austrian competition watchdogs and is expected to close next month.

Founded in 2003, Matrix helps businesses reduce their electricity consumption in offices and other commercial buildings by up to 40 per cent by using data stored in its energy management centre.

The energy management centre, which is located in Glasgow, creates a virtual image of the company based on this information which is then analysed to pre-empt any wastage, and currently has 31,000 data connections to customer sites in 22 countries globally.

Matrix employs around 340 staff throughout nine sites in the UK, including its headquarters in Bury.

Herve Touati, chief executive of E.On Connecting Energies which is making the acquisition on behalf of its parent, observed that in addition to expanding its presence in the energy efficiency market, the acquisition bolsters its existing portfolio of services.

He went on to say: “We see tremendous opportunities from the combination of Matrix’s deep data-led building energy expertise with our capital-led energy efficiency and on-site generation capabilities. This will allow us to provide our customers in the UK and continental Europe much greater control of their energy cost.”

In May last year there were media reports that Matrix investor Lloyds Development Capital (LDC) was looking at selling its stake in the company valued somewhere between GBP 60.00 million and GBP 80.00 million. At the time, the Bury-based business had earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of around GBP 8.00 million, according to sources.

LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, bought a stake in Matrix for GBP 10.00 million in 2010 when the firm was known as Green Sky Energy.

Germany, Düsseldorf & UK, Bury

AOL completes acquisition of Adap.tv

aolAOL Inc. has completed its acquisition of Adap.tv, a global, programmatic video advertising platform for the world’s largest brands, agencies, and publishers. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Adap.tv is a global programmatic video technology stack across all screens and will operate independently as part of AOL’s video organisation. It will be included as part of the overall solution offered by AOL Networks to publishers, advertisers and agencies.

adapt“With the addition of Adap.tv, AOL’s leadership position in digital video is further solidified,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “AOL is well positioned to capitalize on two clear trends in the video space – the movement of advertising dollars from linear to online video and the shift from manual transactions to programmatic media buying. We welcome Adap.tv and its extremely talented employees to the AOL team.”

USA, New York, NY

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Oktogo acquires Travel.ru

logo-oktogoOktogo, the company operating Russia’s major hotel e-commerce business, Oktogo.ru, has acquired Travel.ru, a Russian online travel portal. Founded in 1998, Travel.ru is a well-known brand in Russia, serving  travel content, both editorial and user-generated to Russian travellers. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

travelru“Combined audience of Travel.ru and Oktogo.ru of 3 million unique monthly visitors makes it by far the largest online travel destination serving independent travelers in Russia,” says Marina Kolesnik, co-founder and CEO of Oktogo.ru. “We will further enhance the Oktogo.ru hotel product with unique content from Travel.ru and leverage our hotel product to better serve the loyal audience of Travel.ru. As a result, we will be able to deliver a unique service to customers at different stages of decision making cycle – from those who gather information and search to those who shop and buy travel product.”

Russia, St Petersburg