Cover Feature
Following private equity
investment in Nineteen
Group, EN sits down
with the organiser’s
leadership team and
investor to talk future
growth, the appeal of the
industry and the tricky
business of acquiring
t’s no secret that the world
of private equity investment has been taking
a considerable interest in the trade show
industry in recent years. Unsurprising,
considering this industry’s ability to provide
an almost unparalleled return on investment.
One of the more recent PE investments
was that of Phoenix Equity, which has given
its backing to Nineteen Group, organiser
of the International Security Expo and
International Disaster Response Expo and
which had previously invested in CloserStill
Media from 2012 to 2015. It didn’t take long
for Nineteen Group to get the ball rolling
with the acquisition of Western Business
Exhibitions, organiser of, among other shows,
The Security Event at the NEC.
EN decided it was time to head over to
the London offices of Phoenix Equity and sit
down with Nineteen Group CEO Peter Jones,
group MD Alison Jackson, chairman Phil Soar
and Phoenix Equity director Kevin Keck –
mere hours before their first board meeting –
to learn more about their plans for the future.
Jones, who has spent years in the exhibition
industry as a successful entrepreneur,
described the journey into the world of
private equity.
PJ: In the last 16 years we’ve launched,
built and sold. At the International Security
Expo in 2017 we had a really busy show and
we were approached by various buyers. I
had discussion with Phil, who is my mentor
and my chairman, and my wife about what I
would do next if I were to sell. It had got to
the point where ‘launch, build, sell’ wasn’t
necessarily something that I wanted to do
again, after doing it multiple times. It was Phil
who introduced me to the concept of private
equity, I’ve never been down that path before.
Let’s make no bones about it, launching a
trade show is hard. It’s hard and it’s risky. I’ve
launched and failed before and lost an awful
lot of money. When you’re a small business
you really lay it on the line – you lay your
mortgage on the line and you lay your future
on the line.
You have to invest a lot (I call it investing,
other people call it losing). You invest a lot of
money in the first couple of years to get to the
breakeven point. Having now been through
the cycle quite a few times, I was in a position
I didn’t really need to do that again.
Phil introduced me to the private equity
world. His famous words a year or so ago
were, ‘go and talk to the private equity houses,
and then do a deal with Phoenix Equity’.
They’re great; they get it and they understand
it.
We’re in the earlier stages of building a big
platform organisation; we’re at the concept
phase and Phoenix have been there before.
They’ve been looking for the next platform to
invest in and then we came along.
AJ: I’ve worked for lots of the big corporates
as well as Montgomery, which is private. I’ve
been approached a couple of times before
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