Jordan, Edmiston reports M&A activity "vibrant".

Merger and acquisition activity for the first three quarters of 2006 remained "vibrant" when compaed to the same period last year, despite economic concerns, including a slowing housing market and soft business spending, according to Jordan, Edmiston Group (JEGI; New York). Acquirers in 11 media and information categories completed 493 transactions in the first six months of 2006, representing a 24% increase over 2005. The estimated total value of the 2006 deals was at $40.2 billion, a decrease of 2.8% from the estimated $41.3 billion value of 2005 transactions.

JEGI reported that the B2B Magazine category had 28 transactions in the 2006 period valued at $3.3 billion, compared to 36 deals in 2005 valued at $1.85 billion, including Apax Partners' $464 million purchase of Incisive Media and UBM's sale of CMP Entertainment Media to the Wicks Group of Companies for $47 million. During the same nine-month period in 2006, "The Business Publisher" reported on a total of 47 deals involving over 240 trade magazines and journals, compared to 48 deals involving 359 trade magazines and journals covered in the first nine months of 2005.

The Marketing & Interactive Services category accounted for the largest value of deals for the period, $12.7 billion, while the Online Media category, at 131, had the most number of deals. Deal activity in the Newsletter category increased 19% over 2005 with notable transactions including Prism's purchase of SpeeedNews, HCPro's purchase of National Health Information and Thomson West's acquisition of Quinlan Publishing. Some of the largest deals followed by JEGI include NBC Universal's acquisition of iVillage, Viacom's purchase of Atom Entertainment and Reader's Digest acquisition of AllRecipes.com.