| Buyer | Seller | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Lagardere Group (France) |
Vivendi Universal | $1.6 billion for Editis; Publisher, marketer and distributor of French language books; As a condition of the deal, the European Commission required Lagardere to sell 60% of Editis to negate antitrust concerns |
| 2. | Informa Group Plc (U.K.) |
Taylor & Francis Group Plc (U.K.) |
$1 billion merger; Business, educational and trade show company; Merged company renamed T&F Informa; Informa shareholders to own 51%, Taylor & Francis shareholders to own 49%; Pro forma combined 2003 rev. $906MM |
| 3. | Retos Cartera (Spain) |
Pearson | $990MM for Pearson's 79% stake in Spanish media group Recoletos Grupo de Comunicacion SA |
| 4. | LexisNexis U.S. (Reed Elsevier) |
Seisint, Inc. | $775MM; Information management products and services; Rev. $115MM, EBITDA $45MM |
| 5. | Dow Jones & Company | MarketWatch, Inc. | $519MM; Provider of business news, financial information and analytical tools, and operator of MarketWatch.com and BigCharts.com; Annualized 2004 rev. $78.2MM; Annualized 2004 EBITDA $6.8MM |
| 6. | Thomson Corp. | Information Holdings Inc. | $441MM; Patent and regulatory information for scientific, legal and corporate entities; Rev. $90.4MM, EBITDA $20.2MM |
| 7. | Hachette Livre (Lagardere Group - France) |
WH Smith (U.K.) |
$400MM for Hodder Headline; Publisher of popular consumer book titles; Rev. $260.7MM, Op. profit $34.4MM |
| 8. | Thomson Corp. | TradeWeb Group LLC (Credit Suisse First Boston, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank) |
$385MM plus contingent payments of up to $150MM per year over the next three years for meeting growth targets; online global trading platform for fixed-income securities |
| 9. | ProQuest Company | Voyager Expanded Learning | $360MM ($340MM in cash, $20MM in stock, plus another $20MM if performance targets are met); Provider of in-school reading programs, reading intervention programs and professional development programs for school districts; Rev. $85-90MM |
| 10. | Ask Jeeves Inc. | Interactive Search Holdings | $360.1MM ($150MM in cash, the remainder in stock, plus possible performance incentives); Owner of the search engines My Web Search, Excite, MaxOnline, and iWon; Rev. $37MM |
