Informa plc is a British publishing,

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical p ...

, and

exhibitions An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibitio ...

group based in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, England. It is listed on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St P ...

and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has offices in 43 countries and around 11,000 employees. Informa owns numerous brands including CRC Press, Fan Expo HQ,

Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tuto ...

, '' Lloyd's List'' (London Press Lloyd),

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

, and

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in England that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, Routledge, F1000 (publisher), F1000 Research or Dovepress. It is a division of Informa ...

. Informa acquired UBM in June 2018 as part of its strategy to expand in North America and Asia.

History

Informa itself was created in 1998 by the merger of IBC Group plc and LLP Group plc. Since then Informa has expanded considerably, including a 2004 merger with the publishing company Taylor & Francis and a 2005 acquisition of IIR Holdings, a human capital development company, for £768 million. In October 2006, the company was approached by

Springer Science and Business Media Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

in a takeover bid, but in early November the Informa board rejected the 630p per share offer as too low. In early 2007, chairman Richard Hooper announced his retirement in May and, after consulting with major shareholders, the company moved chief executive Peter Rigby to chairman, and managing director David Gilbertson to Rigby's former post. Informa explained Rigby's move by the need to maintain management stability, although it generated some controversy because it did not follow the advice of the UK's Combined Code on

Corporate Governance Corporate governance is defined, described or delineated in diverse ways, depending on the writer's purpose. Writers focused on a disciplinary interest or context (such as accounting, finance, law, or management) often adopt narrow definitions ...

. On 8 June 2008, '' The Sunday Telegraph'' revealed that

United Business Media UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa in 2018. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its main focus was on B2B events, but its ...

(UBM) had proposed a merger with Informa to create a media group worth over £3 billion. The talks were confirmed by Informa in a press release that same day, but described as "preliminary". Previously on 13 May ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' had reported that the

Carlyle Group The Carlyle Group is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, real assets, and ...

and

Apax Partners Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...

were considering bidding for the company. On 17 June talks with UBM ended because of the rapid rise in Informa's stock price after the public disclosure of the potential merger. On 26 June a private equity consortium consisting of Providence Equity Partners, the

and

Hellman & Friedman Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) is an American private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts as well as growth capital investments. H&F has focused its efforts ...

proposed a takeover bid offering 506 pence per share. In May 2009 the company announced that it would restructure its business to be incorporated in

Jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the l ...

but tax resident in Switzerland. The discontinued domain Informaworld provided subscribers with more than half a million journal articles and 13,000 e-books from all its imprints. In June 2011 the journals and e-books transferred to a new website, Taylor & Francis Online. Abstracting and indexing databases and bibliographic databases were to move from Informaworld to Taylor & Francis Online at a later date. In July 2013, the company announced that Peter Rigby would retire at the end of 2013 to be replaced as CEO by Stephen Carter. Also in 2013, Informa acquired the Canadian company Hobby Star Marketing, who ran the

Fan Expo Canada Fan Expo Canada is an annual speculative fiction fan convention held in Toronto, Ontario. It was founded as the Canadian National Comic Book Expo in 1995Toronto Comicon Toronto Comicon (currently stylized as ''Toronto Comicon'', previously as ''Toronto ComiCon'') is an annual comic book and pop culture convention held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre since 2001. It is owned and ...

comic book convention A comic book convention or comic-con is an event with a primary focus on comic books and comic book culture, in which comic book fans gather to meet creators, experts, and each other. Commonly, comic conventions are multi-day events hosted at co ...

s. Informa has since acquired other conventions and placed them under the auspices of their Fan Expo HQ brand, including Dallas Comic Con and MegaCon. In December 2013, Informa acquired the assets of Elsevier Business Intelligence (EBI) from

Reed Elsevier RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; ...

. The EBI business unit includes such publications as The Pink Sheet, The Gray Sheet, IN VIVO, Start-Up, and the Strategic Transactions database along with a series of notable conferences. The EBI assets combined with Scrip, Datamonitor and several other publications formed the newly created Pharma Intelligence division of Informa Business Information. In January 2014, Carter became CEO of Informa plc. In September 2017, Informa announced that it would be acquiring Dove Medical Press. In January 2018, Informa announced its intent to acquire

UBM plc UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa in 2018. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its main focus was on B2B events, but its pr ...

. The transaction was completed in June 2018. In 2019, Informa sold the former UBM Life Sciences to MJH Associates. Later in 2019, Informa traded it Agriculture Intelligence unit to

IHS Markit IHS Markit Ltd was an information services provider that completed a merger with S&P Global in 2022. Headquartered in London, it was formed in 2016 with the merger of IHS Inc. and Markit Ltd. History IHS Information Handling Services (IHS) "wa ...

in exchange for most of IHS Markit's Technology, Media and Telecoms division. Also in 2019, Informa sold the former Penton design & engineering, manufacturing, energy, buildings, and commercial vehicle divisions, and the former UBM Automotive, to Endeavor Business Media. In February 2020, Informa launched Omdia by consolidated its portfolio of market analyst companies, Ovum Ltd, Heavy Reading, Tractica, and the majority of

's technology, media and telecommunications research business, into a unified brand. The combined research offering includes more than 400 analysts and consultants covering 150 technology markets. Collectively, Omdia issues over 3,000 research reports annually. In February 2022, Informa sold its Informa Pharma Intelligence unit to investment fund,

Warburg Pincus Warburg Pincus LLC is a global private equity firm, headquartered in New York, with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia and India. Warburg has been a private equity investor since 1966. The firm currently has over ...

for $2.6 billion. It also sold '' Lloyd's List'' and EPFR to

Montagu Private Equity Montagu is a mid-market private equity firm with a specialism in carve-out transactions and other first-time buyout investments. Montagu partners with companies with multi-million dollar enterprise values. Headquartered in London, Montagu also ha ...

in 2022.

Operations

Informa is organized into five operating divisions: Informa Connect, Informa Intelligence, Informa Markets, Informa Tech, and

. In June 2021,

John Rishton John Frederick Rishton (born 21 February 1958) is a British business executive who served as the CEO of Rolls-Royce from March 2011 to July 2015. Biography Rishton holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Nottingham. He joi ...

was appointed as chairman, replacing Derek Mapp.

Brands

Informa owns numerous brands including CRC Press, Fan Expo HQ,

, '' Lloyd's List'' (London Press Lloyd),

, and

. Retired and consolidated brands include Institute for International Research, Ovum Ltd, Penton,

The Public Ledger ''The Public Ledger'' is one of the world's longest continuously running magazines. Today it provides agricultural commodity news, analyses and prices. When established in 1760, however, it not only contained prices of commodities in London, but ...

, and UBM.

Informa Connect

* The Bride Show * Fan Expo *

Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo Calgary Expo, known in full as the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, is an annual fan convention held at Stampede Park in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Originally taking place in the BMO Centre, the show began in 2005 as a comic book conventio ...

*Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo *

Fan Expo Boston Fan Expo Boston, formerly Boston Comic Con, is a multigenre convention held annually in Boston, MA. Primarily focused on comic books, the convention later featured media guests from film and television, cosplayers, an art auction, a tabletop/CCG/ ...

Fan Expo Chicago Fan Expo Chicago (formerly Wizard World Chicago Comic Con, and commonly known as the Chicago Comicon), is a comic book convention held during the summer in Rosemont, Illinois, United States, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. It was t ...

*Fan Expo Cleveland * Fan Expo Dallas *Dallas Fan Festival *

Fan Expo Denver Fan Expo Denver (previously Denver Pop Culture Con and Denver Comic Con) is a speculative fiction fan convention held annually in Denver, Colorado, in the United States. The event is a celebration of comics, books, movies, TV, gaming, and other p ...

*Fan Expo New Orleans *Fan Expo San Francisco *Fan Expo St. Louis *Fan Expo Philadelphia *Fan Expo Portland *Fan Expo Vancouver * MegaCon * HRSE * Lloyd's Maritime Academy * MedTech Summit * Middle East Film and Comic Con * Nation's Restaurant News * TMRE

Informa Markets

* Arab Health * Aviation Week Network * CAPA - Centre for Aviation * Coterie * Farm Progress * Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show * Inside Self Storage * Magic * Monaco Yacht Show * Project * Qualifi * Routes * World of Concrete

Informa Tech

Black Hat Briefings Black Hat Briefings (commonly referred to as Black Hat) is a computer security conference that provides security consulting, training, and briefings to hackers, corporations, and government agencies around the world. Black Hat brings together ...

* Game Developer *

InformationWeek ''InformationWeek'' is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was first published in 1985 by CMP Media, later called Informa. The p ...

Light Reading Light Reading Inc. is a telecommunications industry information company based in New York City. Its activities include publishing, data analysis, market research, and events management. History The company was founded in 2000 by Stephen Saunders ...

* London Tech Week * The AI Summit * Omdia *

Ward's Ward's is an American organization that has covered the automotive industry for over 80 years. The organization is responsible for several publications including, ''Ward's AutoWorld'', and ''Ward's Dealer Business''. Ward's also publish the an ...

Taylor & Francis

* CRC Press * Dove Medical Press *

References

External links

* {{authority control Academic publishing companies Technology websites Publishing companies established in 1998 Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange 1998 establishments in England Event management companies of the United Kingdom Multinational companies headquartered in England