Profile
Informed decisions
STEPHEN A CARTER (LORD CARTER), INFORMA PLC GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE, TALKS ABOUT ACQUISITIONS,
COVID AND THE EVENTS OF THE FUTURE. PAUL COLSTON REPORTS
tephen A Carter is the
man behind events giant
Informa’s £1bn share
placing in April, an agile
move to shore up the group’s liquidity at
a time when events worth £610m were
being postponed or cancelled.
Carter was also the man who
masterminded Informa’s surprise
£3.9bn takeover of UBM in 2018.
When Carter took over in the hot
seat at Informa plc seven years ago, it
was a business still spread across three
markets: events, education and data &
information services.
He quickly concluded that the
strategy was to specialise and that the
advanced learning business would not
allow Informa to consolidate quickly
and had relatively low growth.
Moreover, the company was the fourth
or fifth player in that field.
“In information services we were
playing at the edges, and to reach scale
from shaky foundations is always
difficult,” he said.
That left events, where Informa was
big in the conference market, and the
tradeshow business which was good.
M&A acquisitions had begun to flow
before the UBM takeover, with event
company Virgo, bought for cash in 2014.
US event organiser Hanley Wood
was acquired giving Informa another
major regional foothold, in America.
Other brands were added before the
substantial acquisition of US-based
organiser Penton for over a billion US
dollars in 2016.
One investment tip shared by Carter
is: “When you buy a business it is always
worth finding out who else was
interested in it.” In the Virgo
acquisition, he said, it had been Penton.
So, what had been the primary driver
of the UBM deal?
“We saw value in scale and were
attracted to the business that had been
built in Asia…because relative to what
UBM had built, our Asian businesses
were just 20% of their size.”
That deal led to a massive integration
process and a need to reconcile two very
different corporate cultures. The
Informa market-making culture and
UBM’s Events First culture.
“We needed a high degree of respect
for the business we acquired, but there
had to be absolute clarity that we were the
acquirer. It wasn’t a merger,” said Carter.
Carter made the decision to drop the
UBM brand within 12 months.
“It wasn’t a bad brand, but we need to
be one company under one brand,” he
said.
UBM’s experience in China helped
Informa move quickly in response to the
Covid threat. “Had we been the old
Informa we wouldn’t have read the
situation so early,” Carter
acknowledged.
“We locked down early. It took
Below: Stephen
A Carter, Informa
Plc Group Chief
Executive. He was
speaking here
to SISO president
Doug Emslie
colleagues there a lot longer to see that
this wasn’t just SARS 2, the sequel. We
were clear it was a gamechanger.”
The company’s record in driving
revenue growth for 27 straight quarters
no doubt helped relationships with
investors.
“They don’t lend you money at scale if
you can’t deliver results,” he said, noting
that revenue had “disappeared in a click”
when Covid-19 appeared and things
quickly became about cash.
Carter also moved at speed to shrink
costs, having ensured the company had
enough liquidity to be able to look
through all of 2020 as a zero year for
events in the worse case scenario.
Investors bought into the company’s
judgement of the long-term value of its
business, something Carter said speaks
to the quality of this events industry.
“We have taken the risk of 2020 off
the table,” he noted.
Future
Carter is clear also that the events
product will no longer be the same.
The long-term issue for Carter is how
to make a controlled physical gathering
and wrap it to ensure that digital, data
and service delivery are also part of the
product.
Advice on managing the political
aspect is worth listening to from the
Informa CEO, because his words are
backed up by good experience of
working in the halls of power:
“Governments generally don’t like
solutions that are industry-specific, they
like economic benefits. Politicians would
be keener to make decisions on
economic stimulation rather than
‘saving events’,” he said, urging the
industry to shout about its multiplier
effect in a form that speaks to the
economic restart.
8 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / ISSUE 107