Private equity firms circle Reed Elsevier’s B2B titles

According to the Daily Telegraph, Candover, Cinven, Permira, Advent International and Providence Equity Partners are also among the interested parties.

Reed is offering to lend around £160m to the successful bidder. A further £560m – 3.5 times the division’s underlying earnings of £160m – will be offered as a loan by banks.Information on Reed Business Information was sent to prospective bidders last week, and first round bids are due by mid-August.

When it was announced last February that Reed was planning to offload the division, Caspian Publishing founder Mike Bokaie blasted the move as disappointing and noted that there’s a “whiff of panic about publishers’ current behaviour”.

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