Interview
hief
nd
the
e
’s basic
le and
ating
e
in
terion
alent
ing
ur
cluding
y Virgo,
s, said
oon
hina to
ther
time in
added
ition of
r over a
oubting
a
ir
“a
very
Some of those other Penton
assets, Carter noted, are serving
the company well in today’s world
where physical exhibitions are
running at reduced capacity.
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.
Moving on to the single biggest
acquisition done in the exhibition
industry – that of UBM in 2018 in a
mammoth £4bn deal - Emslie noted
it had propelled Informa to the No.1
spot in the field and achieved new
scale in Asia. “Had that been the
primary driver of that deal?” he
asked Carter.
“We had no driving ambition to be
number one. 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.”
Carter added that Informa had let
UBM buy organiser Allworld group
in 2016 (US$485m) before moving for
UBM, which he noted had itself tried
to buy Informa.
Emslie noted the deal had led to
a massive integration process. “You
had externally a lot of difference
in terms of culture. The Informa
market-making culture and UBM’s
Events First culture,” he told Carter.
Carter replied that his team had
gh on
ocess
tions
e, was
er a
fit
le also
ble
al
h
Issue 3 2020 21