Informa, the FTSE 100 events and academic publishing group, agreed on Tuesday to buy Clarion from the private equity firm Blackstone for an enterprise value of £2.24 billion.
Tom Ward, media and internet expert, said the deal is Informa's biggest since its £3.8 billion purchase of UBM in 2018.
He said the price is about 11x expected 2027 EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), which broadly matches comparable transactions.
Ward said the multiple falls to about 8x once the targeted cost savings from combining the businesses are included.
He added that Informa's record on integrating acquisitions offers some comfort.
The deal represents about 15% of Informa's own enterprise value, Ward said, and accelerates its shift towards business-to-business events.
Informa will part-fund the purchase with a £940 million share placing, equal to about 9% of its issued share capital.
The rest comes from committed acquisition financing, and Informa is pausing its share buyback.
Ward called the placing and the pause near-term trade-offs, but said both fit Informa's long-term approach of returning surplus cash to shareholders and raising money when needed.
Informa expects the deal to lift adjusted diluted earnings per share by a mid-single-digit percentage in 2027.
It targets a post-tax return on invested capital above 10% by 2029, and net debt below three times Ebitda at the end of 2026.
Clarion, founded in 1947, owns more than 100 events brands, and Informa says the combined portfolio would exceed 1,000 brands across more than 30 countries.
Informa also said it will start a formal separation of Taylor & Francis, its academic publisher, but has not said whether it favours a sale or a spin-off.
It kept its 2026 guidance of about 6% underlying revenue growth, and expects the Clarion deal to complete in the fourth quarter.
