It’s that time of the year. Inevitably, our New Year predictions are a blend of deals that will (almost) definitely happen and those that might or should. See you in 2019.
B2B
Informa, now the world’s largest exhibitions group after acquiring UBM in 2018, divests its STM and B2B information companies
UK B2B Centaur Media MBO of its Marketing portfolio (Marketing Week, eConsultancy, Festival of Marketing, and OysterCatchers) after the planned sale of The Lawyer, Money Marketing and other ‘non core’ exhibitions and information services
UK-based but increasingly international information and events group AgriBriefing acquires the agrifood information of Reed Business Information and/or Informa
IPOs of acquisitive UK companies: AgriBriefing, Mark Allen Group , and Metropolis Group
Daily Mail Group sells its remaining 49% shareholding in Euromoney, the £1.2bn company it founded in 1969
Michael Bloomberg decides to run for US President and sells his eponymous data-tech business to Hearst which became 100% owner of the Fitch Group in 2018
News
Mail Online and BuzzFeed introduce paywalls in a bid to achieve long-promised profitability
Jeff Bezos (Washington Post) acquires UK’s privately-owned Daily Telegraph
News Corp launches worldwide news streaming service
News Corp acquires Australian Financial Review from Sydney-based Nine Entertainment Co which recently acquired the daily as part of Fairfax Media
New York Times launches ‘pick-and-mix’ digital content subscriptions, as a sequel to its success in building subscriptions for individual ‘strands’ including the Daily Crossword (350k subs) and Cooking (120k)
Exhibitions
The Blackstone-owned Clarion Events acquires the largest US-owned group Emerald Expositions
RELX sells the £1bn-revenue Reed Exhibitions, until this year the world leader
Daily Mail Group acquires Britain’s £450m ITE Group
Magazines
Hearst and Conde Nast (long-time family-owned rivals but collaborators in shared circulation and production services) agree to merge their worldwide magazines groups
Broadcast
News Corp Australia ‘merges’ with SevenWest (Channel Seven, Pacific Magazines) to create a multi-media rival to Nine Entertainment Co (which acquired Fairfax Media)
English Premier League announces a plan for direct-to-consumer streaming of its top-rated football
Daily Mail TV extends its daily programme from the US to the UK and Australia
Axel Springer’s newly-profitable Business Insider launches global ‘business TV’ streaming service
