Graham Sherren, the veteran British publisher who built the 42-year-old Centaur Media into a £140mn listed company in the heyday of B2B magazines, is back. He and Piers Diacre – former Centaur colleague and ex owner of pensions information provider IPE – have invested £400k in the two-year-old media events and information company Di5rupt (“Disrupt”) alongside founders Cobus Heyl and John Schlaefli.
Diacre and Sherren (who becomes chair) are believed to be acquiring some 35-40% of the company.
Di5rupt operates the FIPP World Media Congress and other events and publishing on behalf of the global magazine-centric trade association of which the founders were formerly directors. It is planning to grow its information business alongside the magazine What’s New in Publishing (acquired in 2022 from tech company Sovrn). It is believed the curiously-named company (and magazine) will soon be rebranded as Media Makers Meet (MX3), after its Berlin event. Although this has not yet been announced, the new branding has been revealed on the web site as “a B2B media intelligence and events business that brings together and empowers global professionals”.
It is now expected to build on the media-tech specialisation of many of its conferences and to grow subscriptions-funded membership groups in B2B and specialist media.
Sherren will relish the opportunity to apply his experience to a B2B fledgling 14 years after he relinquished the chair of Centaur, in which he retains a 3% shareholding. He had founded Centaur in 1981 after decades at onetime B2B magazine leader Morgan Grampian (successively Miller Freeman and United Business Media) during which he pioneered “controlled circulation” free magazines in the UK.
Centaur built formidable B2B magazine brands including: The Lawyer, Design Week, Money Marketing, Creative Review, Employee Benefits, New Media Age, and Marketing Week. It was a sparkling company which exploited the booming 20th century UK market for jobs advertising and events. It launched more B2B weeklies than anyone else during a quarter-century when classifieds-stuffed magazines accounted for 100% of all the country’s B2B publishing profit. In the pre-internet age, Sherren had the magic touch, even with private equity investors who successively backed the company and left him to get on with it.
His ultimate coup was the audacious March 2004 “accelerated IPO” in which Centaur’s broker Numis acquired the company from then majority shareholder Veronis Suhler Stevenson and immediately floated it on the London Stock Exchange. The £140m IPO value reflected EBITDA of £9.6m and a margin of 14%, for the portfolio of 24 magazines, 20 exhibitions and 100 conferences.
But that was almost the high point of a company which – like the UK B2B magazine industry itself – lost much of its classified ad revenue to online platforms. By 2009, when Sherren retired from the company he had created, Centaur was already heading for a cut-price sell-off of “non core” brands which, ultimately, left it to concentrate on marketing and law (notably, Econsultancy, Influencer Intelligence, MW Mini MBA, and The Lawyer).
In 2022, the company had £41.6mn revenue and £8.5mn EBITDA with a 20% margin and £9mn of net cash. This year, it’s forecasting £9.5mn profits – to match the IPO year – and a record 23% profit margin. Centaur’s long spell of post-digital rehabilitation is complete – just as its founder is getting back into business.
The rejuvenated Centaur Media Plc (with a market cap 50% below the IPO peak) is, presumably, preparing for some expansive M&A. Who knows where Graham Sherren’s new company may go?
Di5rupt
