RE: Candover and Cinven & springer

["Alison Macdonald" <alison.macdonald@britishlibrary.net>]

Here is the Sunday Times article, now a fortnight old.  A search on the FT
site last night produced nothing other than that Wolters Kluwer shares
dropped 5.9% on 30th January after reporting a 7% rise in annual profits.
Alison Macdonald


January 19, 2003
Bertelsmann in �650m sale
JOHN O'DONNELL

A JOINT bid by Cinven and Candover has emerged as a frontrunner in the
auction to buy Bertelsmann's �650m scientific-publishing business. The
decision by potential trade buyers such as Reed Elsevier not to join the
auction for Bertelsmann Springer has moved the two private-equity houses
to the front of the queue of bidders. A sale is expected to be arranged by
March.

One source said: "We no longer expect any of the big players in the market
such as Wolters Kluwer or Thomson Corporation to make a move. And the
offer from Cinven and Candover is strong."

Bertelsmann is selling the business, which publishes professional
magazines and information for doctors, economists and engineers, to
refocus on its television and music interests. In Britain, the German
media giant owns Channel 5 and Random House, the publisher.

Private-equity firms such as Cinven and Candover have been attracted to
the publishing firm because it has stable subscriptions and scope for
price rises. It makes profits of more than �46m. Raising a large bank loan
to help finance the deal would be made easier by this secure cashflow.

The two worked together on a similar deal last year when they purchased
the �600m academic-publishing business of Wolters Kluwer, the Dutch group.
In April Cinven took over Vivendi's French trade-magazines arm. Gunter
Thielen, Bertelsmann's chairman, has signalled that Springer would not be
sold if bids did not exceed �650m.

Bertelsmann is making cutting its debt burden a priority, after the forced
departure in August of Thomas Middelhoff, its high-flying chief executive.
Its debt problems were exacerbated late last year when Clive Calder,
founder of the Zomba music business, exercised a �2 billion option forcing
Bertelsmann to buy the shares it did not hold in the company. Selling
Springer will help to ease this financial burden."

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Monday, 03 February 2003 00:00
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Candover and Cinven & springer

Further to Chuck Hamaker's message below, the London Times article should
be at:

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-547172,00.html>

But the Times seems to have recently introduced a charging feature that
nobody's caught up with yet, at least not our library (which has the Times
backfiles online).  If anyone out in liblicense-l land knows what the
article says, please do report to the rest of us.

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