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23rd January 2018
A recent article in Exhibition News has highlighted the possible merger between events organiser UBM and Informa the events company that acquired Penton Media in 2016. The article reads as follows;

JAN 22, 2018 BY FULLARD
PUBLISHED: 16:55 16/01/18 UPDATED: 09:17 22/01/18
The latest moves towards a UBM/Informa merger have met with some doubts in the City of London and among industry experts that a deal will be struck any time soon.
“A merger of the two event organiser giants has been the subject of speculation in the City for much of the last decade,” former UFI (the global association for the exhibition industry) managing director and industry consultant Paul Woodward tells EW, “with lots of analysts keen to see some consolidation in the very fragmented events industry. The two companies would actually be a pretty good fit with relatively few major overlaps in their exhibitions businesses.
“UBM has no activity to speak of in the Middle East, one of Informa’s strongholds, while its Asia business is the strongest in the industry and would substantially beef up Informa’s position there. Both have made big investments in the US and the two together would be real powerhouse in the world’s biggest market. I’d say that, given the reaction of the companies’ respective share prices since the leak and subsequent announcement on Tuesday [15 January], the maths of the offer doesn’t really seem to add up all that well any more. So, there’s going to be pressure on Informa to improve it which would make it look pretty expensive. So, it’s far from a done deal and we probably won’t really know where we stand with it until very close to that 13 February deadline.”
Shares in Informa initially dropped 8% on 17 January, the day after a statement was released by UBM’s group company secretary Mark Peters announcing that two of the world’s largest events organisers, UBM and Informa, were in merger discussions.
A large proportion of the share price fall was due to arbitrage funds rather than institutional investors selling down their stakes and the share price recovered to end the day 5.5% down.
It is understood Informa had made a £3.8bn ($US5.29bn) offer in cash and shares for UBM to create a merged operation worth £9bn (US$12.53bn). Under the proposed equity deal Informa shareholders could end up with two-thirds of the new enterprise
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