Apax Partners agrees to acquire Incisive Media.

Private equity firm Apax Partners (London/New York) has agreed to acquire Incisive Media (London/New York) in a cash deal that values the financial information provider at around 199 million [pounds sterling], or about $379 million. Apax said it will pay 195 pence for each Incisive Media share, a premium of about 13% over the closing price of 173p on September 20, the day before the offer was made.

Incisive Media is a growing specialist information provider operating in eight core markets, financial risk management, retail investment, insurance, mortgage, capital markets/financial IT, marketing, photography and private equity, divided into four main divisions. The largest of the four divisions, Financial Services, produces such print properties as "Investment Week," "Bloomberg Money," "Hedge Funds Review" and "Private Equity Europe," as well as online products such as IFAOnline. The Risk management division produces "Risk," "Asia Risk," "Energy Risk," "FX Week" and "Life and Pensions," among other titles.

The company's Insurance & Legal Services division produces "Post," "Reinsurance," "Professional Broking," "Cover," "Insurance Age" and "Legal Week," while the Marketing/Specialist division produces "Waters Magazine," "British Journal of Photography" and "Inside Market Data," as well as such online properties as Search Engine Strategies, Search Engine Watch and ClickZ. Incisive also produces related conferences and events, web sites, databases and contract publications.

As part of the deal, three current members of Incisive Media management, including CEO Tim Weller, will invest 5.9 million [pounds sterling] in the company for an equity interest of 11.9%. Incisive Media was formed in July 2000 through the merger of City Financial Communications and Timothy Benn Publishing and the company has expanded through acquisition since that time. In June of this year, Incisive acquired AVCJ Group (Hong Kong), a supplier of information to operators in the Asian venture capital, private equity and mergers and acquisitions market, and in September 2005, the company purchased Global Professional Media (London), the publisher of "Legal Week" and related products.

The purchase price represents a multiple of approximately 16.7x Incisive's EBITDA for the year ending Dec. 31, 2005 and about 15.1x EBITDA for the 12 months ending June 30, 2006. For the first six months of 2006, Incisive had revenue of 33 million [pounds sterling], a 37% increase over the 24 million [pounds sterling] reported in the same period for 2005. Profit for the period increased 1%, going from 2.76 million [pounds sterling] in the first half of 2005 to 2.78 million [pounds sterling] this year.