The FTSE 100 events group will buy Clarion Events from Blackstone, fund part of it with a roughly £940 million share sale, pause its buyback and explore separating Taylor & Francis.
Informa is doubling down on live business events. The London-listed company said Tuesday it will buy Clarion Events, owner of more than 100 business-to-business event brands, from Blackstone at an enterprise value of £2.24 billion, or about $2.96 billion.
To pay for it, Informa will use committed acquisition financing and raise about £940 million through an accelerated bookbuild placing equal to roughly 9% of its share capital, alongside a retail offer. Its current share buyback is paused. The company expects net debt to be below three times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization at the end of 2026 and below 2.5 times by the end of 2027. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to clearances.
At the same time, Informa launched a formal review of options to separate Taylor & Francis, its academic publishing arm, which has revenue approaching $1 billion and is growing about 4% a year. A decision is due alongside full-year results in March 2027.
The moves "mark the latest step in a growth strategy that has seen B2B revenues grow tenfold since 2014," Chief Executive Stephen Carter said.
What Informa is paying
Clarion is expected to generate more than £575 million in revenue in 2027 at adjusted operating margins above 30%. That implies operating profit of at least £172 million. At £2.24 billion, Informa is paying roughly 3.9 times expected 2027 revenue and about 13 times expected operating profit, a full but not extreme price for a business with recurring annual events.
The share placing covers about 42% of the enterprise value. Debt covers the rest, and the buyback pause and explicit leverage targets sit alongside that funding mix.
How investors took it
Informa shares rose 3.83% to 894.8 pence in early London trading on Tuesday, a strong reception for a deal that dilutes existing holders by about 9%. The package on offer is a more focused events business on one side, and a possible separation of an academic publisher whose content is increasingly valuable to artificial intelligence developers seeking licensed data.
The pattern
Informa is the third large acquirer in two sessions to pause buybacks and fund a deal with fresh equity or debt, after Schneider Electric's agreement for PTC and C.H. Robinson's deal for RXO. With long-term borrowing costs near multidecade highs in the U.S. and elevated in Europe, the open question is whether acquirers are deliberately leaning on equity rather than levering up fully.
The deal also hands Blackstone an exit from Clarion. The next signal is the Taylor & Francis process: a sale to a strategic or financial buyer would crystallize value faster than a demerger and could fund some of the Clarion debt.