Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Deal News: Bureau van Dijk On the Block

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that Bureau van Dijk has hired LongAcre Partners and Goldman Sachs to review the company's strategic options. Generally a prelude to a sale.
Industry sources said Bureau van Dijk is likely to generate bidding interest from business information publishers Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Pearson and Incisive Media, which was last year acquired by private equity firm Apax. US bidders such as Dow Jones & Co, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Standard & Poor's owner McGraw-Hill and Factset are also likely to be interested.
BvD was sold to Candover a number of years ago when the founder and owner sold 60% ownership. Senior management own the balance of the stock. The company publishes business and company information on millions of companies (private and public) around the world. From their web site:
We provide detailed, analytical databases, for in-depth research, such as AMADEUS (a pan-European database), ORBIS (33 million companies around the world) as well as extensive country-specific databases (FAME, DIANE, DAFNE). These products are ideal for in-depth research of individual companies, identifying
companies complying with specific criteria plus detailed analysis of company
peer groups and benchmarking. In addition, our ZEPHYR database covers M&A
deals and rumours around the world.
The Telegraph suggests the company could be worth over $1.1billion; however, financial information is sparse and this company could be a one of a kind deal given the value of the type of information it collects and the depth of its databases.

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