Reed sale is off
The big story overnight is that Reed Elsevier has called off its sale of Reed Business Information. Not entirely surprising given the economic situation, but they had seemed grimly determined to see it through for as long as there were bidders.
In Australia, RBI’s titles include Australian Doctor, B&T and Money Management. The flagship of the organisation is the US-based entertainment bible Variety, while its UK offerings include the likes of New Scientist, Computer Weekly, Personnel Today and Travel Weekly.
At this stage it is unclear what the result of this will be. But it’s not out of the question that there’ll now be a piecemeal sell-off.
Despite the fact this is my former employer (declaration of interest: I still own Reed shares), I’ve no inside information. But my guess is that the prolonged sale process will have shaken loose a lot of potential bidders for individual parts of the empire. It will be interesting to see if they now get a hearing.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Reed’s problem is that, while it has some highly prized assets, it also has some out-and-out dogs no-one wants. If it does decide to asset strip the business, it will be left with all the rubbish (which it will presumably close). The big question is, how much does it need the cash?
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