Interview
tried to get a balance right.
“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.
You needed ultimately one party
that could make decisions on
how it could work.”
Some UBM old hands had
defended the ‘retired’ UBM
brand, particularly in Asia,
but Carter made the decision
to drop it within 12 months.
“It wasn’t a bad brand, but
we need to be one company
under one brand,” he said and
thought, by and large, things
worked out pretty well.
“The exhibition industry is
respectful and we didn’t burn
too many bridges.”
UBM experience in China,
Carter said, had actually 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,” he
acknowledged.
“We locked down early and
moved to Europe and America.
It took colleagues there a lot
longer to see that this wasn’t
just SARS 2, the sequel. We
were clear it was a gamechanger.”
Carter reheated an old
investors’ saying to make the
point on Informa’s strategy to
go for liquidity: “Revenue is
vanity, cash is sanity and profit
is reality!”
He pointed out that the
company’s record in driving
revenue growth for 27
straight quarters had 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 it
quickly became about cash.
He moved at speed to
shrink costs, and to enhance
liquidity. “We secured $1.24bn
of cash liquidity from banks,”
he added, recalling that the
shareholders then took a 20%
dilution for the fresh equity.
The company had effectively,
he said, secured enough
liquidity to be able to look
through all of 2020 as a zero
year for events if worse came
to the worst.
Investors bought into the
model and the company’s
judgement of the long-term
value of its business, something
Carter said speaks to the quality
of this exhibition industry.
“Investors see the
efficiency of the tradeshow
product and the power of its
22 Issue 3 2020