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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