B2B information. UK-based B2B information and training group Wilmington plc has sold ICP, its specialist leading credit reporting company, to its management team, led by managing director Jennifer Guy. The £3m transaction price will be paid in instalments over the next five years. Since 1983, ICP has provided research in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America, from offices in London and Dubai. Wilmington itself operates across risk-compliance, healthcare and finance-law. Some 57% of its revenues are in the UK, 19% in the US and 15% in Continental Europe. The one-time trade magazine and directories business was a 1990s buyout from the wreckage of the late Robert Maxwell’s bankrupt media group. Its share price abruptly lost 25% two weeks ago after a warning that underlying profit for the year ended 30 June had fallen by 3%. With 2019 now expected to be a year of further fall-back instead of previously forecast growth, the £170m company (which recently spent millions on a move to new London offices) looks distinctly sub-scale and vulnerable. After a few years of quietly shedding advertising-based operations, reducing its dependance on legal training and some neat internationalising acquisitions, Wilmington is feeling unloved by the London stockmarket which worries that Brexit might make things even worse, especially for its sagging healthcare division. Private equity rumours of a 2019 MBO for Wilmington Plc are getting louder. But the revitalised £1.4bn Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc might also be doing the sums.
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Will Wilmington’s next MBO be itself?
