Scarcely four years after the end of the pandemic, this has been the year of the trade show Big Bang. In a four-week burst, private equity firms splashed almost $6bn on Emerald and Questex, of the US, and CloserStill and Hyve, in the UK.
The depth of investor support for the sector was underlined by the fact that the deals happened despite the war in the Middle East which disrupted trade shows in one of the fastest-growing regions. It was just months after Informa CEO Stephen Carter had relocated to Dubai, location of its newly-formed $650mn-revenue, 40-show JV across the Middle East, India, Turkey and Africa.
But another aspect of The Big Bang emphasized the events fervour of private equity.
Apollo (buyer of Emerald and Questex for an estimated $2.3bn) had not previously invested in trade shows, while Hellman & Friedman (which paid $1.8bn for Hyve) had been absent from the events market for more than 20 years. Closer Still had been acquired by Providence/ Searchlight for $1.77bn.
Emerald and Questex (now merged under the Forge brand) had reportedly been unable to find alternative investors in 2025. Their success in 2026 highlighted the absence from the feeding frenzy of the world’s third largest trade show company, Clarion Events. Its touted $2bn sale had been aborted last year, amid the turmoil of Trump Administration tariffs and trade boycotts. Ten-year owner Blackstone knows it would have been more likely to find a buyer in 2026 and could have become the largest trade show acquisition since Informa bought UBM for $5.4bn in 2018.
Clarion had been founded in 1947 as P&O Events by the owner of London’s former Earls Court and Olympia exhibition venues; it became the in-house event organizer, mainly of specialist consumer shows. P&O divested the Earls Court & Olympia company in 1999. But what became Clarion Events took off in 2004 as an MBO under longtime CEO Simon Kimble. In the ensuing 10 years, Clarion bought and built what became an increasingly international B2B events portfolio with acquisitions in Germany, Turkey, the US, Thailand, and South America.
Its progress can be gauged by soaring valuations since the 2004 MBO:
| Clarion acquired | Private equity acquirer | Price £mn |
| 2004 | HG | 45 |
| 2008 | Veronis Suhler Stevenson | 120 |
| 2015 | Providence | 200 |
| 2017 | Blackstone | 600 |
Blackstone had won the 2017 auction – ahead of five other pe firms – reportedly by pre-emptively offering the £600mn target price ahead of the scheduled final bidding.
The same year it had paid $440mn for the former Nasdaq-listed, Hong Kong-based Global Sources, a B2B marketplace franchise comprising eight Hong Kong sourcing fairs including the world’s largest electronics/mobile-electronics shows, a China machinery show and digital platform serving 1.5mn+ buyers. Some 50% of the acquisition price had been accounted for by office real estate, which had dissuaded other pe bidders. Blackstone subsequently sold the buildings.
Before the pandemic, Clarion spent a total of £500mn on acquisitions, including Global Sources and the Penwell energy B2B which together generated at least £150mn revenue in 2019. During covid, Blackstone injected some £100mn of additional capital and has since spent an estimated £100mn on acquisitions.
The planned divestment in 2025 may have been made more problematic by Global Sources at a time when US investors (and the Trump Administration) were, to say the least, wary of Chinese investment. Other investors might have also been nervous about the company’s defence and security events, despite its new status as a global growth market.
But despite the fact that 2025-6 financials (below) were boosted by the biennial DSEI in London (Clarion’s largest show by revenue), defence events in the UK, Germany, Australia and Japan last year accounted for just 8% of a company whose primary sectors are: Consumer Electronics (22%), Energy Transition (21%), Gaming (15%), and Public Safety (9%). Clarion’s revenue is almost equally divided between Europe (strongly UK), the US, and Asia (mostly Global Sources). Less than 1% of revenue has been in the Middle East.
Given the entry into the B2B events market of the pe majors Apollo and Hellman & Friedman and the, as yet unconsummated, interest of KKR (which had been variously interested in CloserStill, Emerald and Clarion), we might expect some more major deals in the next 12 months.
A share-cash merger might be the way in which Clarion (with or without Global Sources, which Blackstone has retained Goldman Sachs to sell for a hoped $600-700mn) and, say, Forge (with former Clarion chief Simon Kimble as a board director) could combine to become the world’s second largest trade show group, ready to challenge Informa for longterm leadership. Or perhaps Clarion could merge with CloserStill (a combination once favoured by Blackstone), or with Hyve. Or could Blackstone sell-off some of Clarion’s higher-value verticals like gaming and defence to maximize their total return? Somewhere in the mix might be the Belgium-based Easyfairs which has made its first acquisitions in the US and, last year, had come close to buying Questex.
Watch out too for the cashed-up Axel Springer. Long searching for diversification, the Berlin-based news group this year made its first significant entry into B2B information and events with the acquisition of the estimated $50mn-revenue Biznow, a 21-year-old digital media and events company operating 400 real estate industry conferences in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. The move is likely to lead to the acquisition of trade shows as well as the development of conferences through its news brands in the UK and US.
Further down the scale is the Nineteen Group (66% owned by Phoenix pe, 34% by employees). Having only made its first profit in 2023, the UK based company is expected to reach revenue of £110mn and £30mn EBITDA in 2026. This almost 4x revenue growth in four years has been achieved with an estimated acquisition spend of about £90mn, £35mn of which was spent on the Oliver Kinross building industry shows in the UK, Hong Kong, US and Australia. That portfolio will this year have revenue of at least £25mn, more than doubled since 2023.
Counter-intuitively, given Nineteen’s transformation from a wholly UK to international trade show organizer, the domestic revenues will this year have increased by 35%+, propelled by its three largest shows: Supply & Security, Installer Show, and Retail Technology, which may account for 35% of total revenue.
Nineteen’s steadily improving EBITDA margins (27% expected in 2026) reflect the newness of some of its major shows, on the way to an expected 30% margin next year.
It would be a major surprise if the company had not been snapped up in the next 12 months, ahead of a 2027 that may deliver £140mn revenue and EBITDA of up to £40mn. At that point, it could achieve a valuation of some £500mn.
But, as we prepare for this next wave of trade show growth (albeit with continuing fears of economic downturn) we must also consider the challenges that will increasingly separate the best from the rest among event companies.
Trade shows have demonstrated their resilience by rebounding from two years of pandemic paralysis, seemingly stronger than before. More recently, the industry’s reputation has been burnished by the growing sense that live events are almost a ‘safe haven’ from AI attacks on media content.
But that’s actually not enough.
Things are changing in B2B, and the magic of trade shows must be protected by much more than the events themselves. In a world where the newest tech can savage once-revered information providers, the ultimate winners will be those which have durable customer relationships. That may, of course, be largely through events. But it can also include transactional relationships integrated into workflows and digital relationships creating education and information-sharing communities, networks and year-round purchasing.
There is fast-growing AI-powered digital competition for the business relationships that trade shows once dominated.
The point is that visitors turning up en masse for an annual event may not always represent a durable relationship. Just as with B2B information providers, the relationships must be enriched through increased understanding of, and participation in, a customer’s business before, during and after an event. Otherwise, traditional relationships with exhibitors, visitors and delegates risk being eroded by AI.
For all the unmistakeable appeal of personal ‘live’ relationships, AI can reduce their value, if not developed beyond mere event attendance. Trade shows are no longer operating in isolation. Their continuing success as B2B relationship builders will increasingly depend on high-value tech skills and resources.
Put simply, event organisers must become the masters of tech-charged multi-level relationships – before the masters of AI themselves.
In the context of trade show M&A, investors will increasingly value the importance of data-fed customer relationships and not just events themselves. But it’s a very good place to start and a good time to invest.
| SnapShot Clarion Events | ||||
| £mn Yr to Jan. | 2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 |
| Revenue | 507 | 417 | 433 | 257 |
| Europe | 36% | 31% | ||
| Asia | 25% | 33% | ||
| US | 40% | 36% | ||
| EBITDA | 137 | 73 | 130 | 26 |
| Margin | 27% | 18% | 30% | 10% |
| People | 2,005 | 2,018 | 2,009 | 1,710 |
| SnapShot Nineteen Group | ||||
| £mn | 2026* | 2025* | 2024 | 2023 |
| Revenue | 110 | 90 | 51 | 31 |
| UK | 50% | 45% | 59% | 74% |
| US | 30% | 25% | — | — |
| RoW | 20% | 30% | 41% | 26% |
| EBITDA | 30 | 22 | 13 | 5 |
| Margin | 27% | 24% | 25% | 16% |
| People | 295 | 237 | 155 | 115 |
