Industry Report - Update on M+A Activities (2007 January)

Reports of 2006 from the specialist investment banks and consultants in the US are frankly shell-shocked. They had been expecting a good year in mergers and acquisitions. Nobody dreamt that it would be as good as it was. The Jordan Edmiston Group says that it "tracked 621 transactions [in the media and information sector] with a total value of more than $57 billion,surpassing the records set in 2005 by 15% and 6% respectively".The company reported 41 B2B publishing deals valued at $6 billion and 52 exhibition and conference transactions worth $875 million.

BSG has been tracking M & A activity in the business media and events sector in Asia since 2000. The number of deals and total value continue to be extremely small compared to North America although growth has been steady. This report, which will be produced every six months updates you on our tracking and comments on what we see as key trends. Future reports will give more detail on major deals. As this is the first, we focus primarily on providing you with the background.

Many of the deals in Asia involve the acquisition of small, private companies by larger, often multi-national companies.There is very little trading between Asian companies and, as yet, very limited activity by the major private equity funds. Because of the size and nature of many of the deals, the financial details are often not revealed. On those occasions, BSG uses its industry knowledge to make an estimate of deal size. As these estimates sometimes involve the use of confidential data,they are not revealed individually in this report which publishes only publicly-announced information.