DEALMAKERS
A flying start to the year
Steve Monnington of Mayfield Merger Strategies looks back at highlights from 2023 and rounds up another busy period for M & A activity
Another exhibition M & A year comes to an end and over the last four years , we seem to have settled down to 40 to 45 transactions per year , significantly down on the pre-Covid years . The number of buyers is also much lower post-Covid .
Number of deals and buyers 2018-2023
Geographically , the UK and USA continue to dominate with 31 of the 45 transactions and there was almost no M & A activity in markets such as Asia where the exhibition sector came out of Covid restrictions later and where most events have taken longer to get back to 2019 levels .
Informa Informa tops the table for the highest transaction value . Its most eye-catching deal was the purchase of Tarsus Group from Charterhouse for a headline price of $ 940m . Informa also acquired Winsight , a US-based event organiser and digital information services group for the food sector , for $ 380m . Other major acquisitions by Informa included LSX leaders , a network and a series of congresses for the Biotech sector and the HIMSS annual exhibition and conference , acquired from the Chicagobased Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
CloserStill Media CloserStill Media was the busiest in terms of the number of transactions . The most notable of the five deals completed in 2023 was also its biggest transaction to date which saw it acquire UKI Media and Events , a business that has been on the wish list of
08 — Spring