Divestment Watch
As RBI have decided that they don’t want TheOpsMgr to run his blog any more and have prevailed upon him to take it down, Private Frazer thought it might be an idea to preserve it for posterity before it evaporates from cyberspace.
This then is what I’ve been able to cut and paste from yon Google.
RBI staffers who want somewhere to post rumours, management statements, unsubstantiated gossip and general whinges can email me (private.frazer@hotmail.co.uk) or use the ‘post a comment’ section at the very foot of this page.
This is a direct scrape from the Google cache, hence the coloured highlights on certain words and the problems with formatting. Not all the links will work either.
Click here to get back to the main home page
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Updates
25/06/08 Financial Times: Reed Business Information IM delayed due to financing package
13/06/08 Folio: Reed Elsevier staffer ‘quietly’ asked to shut down RBI divestment blog
Adrian Monck: The case of the disappearing Reed Elsevier Blog
05/06/08 Folio: RBI cuts US staff
03/06/08 Buddy can you spare £3/4 billion?
02/06/08 Folio: Reed Elsevier Considers Loan to RBI Buyer
29/05/08 The Times RBI information memorandum delayed
29/05/08 Reed sells defence exhibitions business
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The Divestment Watch Blog
What happens when your division is divested (sold)? What will it mean to me? What is the process? How can I prepare myself? That’s the topic of this blog, focussing on the Reed Elsevier sale of Reed Business.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Pay-per-view for RBI journo’s
An interesting quote over at journalism.co.uk.
“Speaking on a panel at the PPA’s annual conference, Jim Muttram, who founded RBI’s Estates Gazette Interactive, said rewarding journalists for the number of page impressions generated by their content online had been mooted by the company.
Journalists would take a lower basic salary in return for the chance to earn a commission style bonus for online content if such a pay model was implemented, Muttram told Journalism.co.uk.”
I assume you’d need more readers than DivestmentWatch so TheOpsMgr isn’t planning to change careers to paid blogger anytime soon…
Still, it’s interesting to hear about new business models being discussed, even if other people have trashed the economics of paying freelancers for content in an earlier post.
I sense a great question for a future poll here though - “Would you be willing to change to a freelance pay-per-view model?”…
Monday, 5 May 2008
Poll #2
Hot on the heels of Poll #1 we have the aptly named… Poll #2.
The question this week is “My preference for our new owner is…” - someone has to buy RBI, so who would you prefer?
Another media/publishing company, a straight private equity takeover, a management buy-out by the current leadership team or do you have some other preferred option?
If you do vote “other” it would be good if you could add a comment to this post to outline what you think the “other” alternatives might be.
Over to you!
Results of Poll # 1
Well, the results are in for the first DivestmentWatch poll!
Over 70% of voters were willing to put “their money where their mouth is” and buy their brand if they had the chance.
TheOpsMgr knows that the result isn’t exactly scientific (I have no way of knowing if all the voters actually work at RBI, for example) but since I am the trusting sort I am going to assume that they are broadly accurate.
On that basis, I’d say that 70% is pretty impressive, and demonstrates that there is a lot of “employee brand loyalty” out there for any prospective RBI buyer to harness when transforming the business (if it is managed in the right way).
Sunday, 4 May 2008
Another PE company floats the idea…
The Sindy reports that private equity firm CharterHouse might be interested in running the numbers on RBI.
As per usual it’s couched in a number of conditional maybes:
“A source close to Charterhouse added: “RBI might be an interesting business, yes. When it becomes available we will sit down and see if we’re going to go for it.”"
The more interesting bit for me (because it’s closer to home for TheOpsMgr!) is this:
“A media industry source said that Charterhouse would be keen on merging RBI’s totaljobs.com with the TES’s jobs site.”
Buying the whole of RBI globally just to get Totaljobs?
Not sure that that would make economic sense… then again, if RBI is sold off in geographic regions buying RBI UK just to get Totaljobs isn’t so crazy.
Are they really interested or is this just more journalistic speculation built off the back of an off-the-cuff comment designed to keep the RBI sale story alive?
As per usual, time will tell.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Sorry for the lack of recent updates…
My apologies for the lack of recent updates…
Work has been very busy preparing for a data centre migration to a new hosting facility in Docklands in July.
Plus May is looking rather busy…
The London Better Together Charity Day is on the 16th May and I am busy organising that as a great team event for my crew. 24th May is my MBA graduation and the 25th is my first wedding anniversary (which is also taking some preparation if I want to STAY married!).
Tuesday 27th is the Great Place to Work Awards dinner and then on Friday 30th I am off on the RE Earthwatch Expedition to participate in dolphin and whale research… so, all in all, a busy time.
Thanks to the 81 (and counting) people who have voted in the poll so far - if anyone has any suggestions for another survey please post your suggestions in the comments! Once the current poll has closed I will summarise the results and comments in another post.
News-wise it’s fairly quiet… nothing on the press wires at least.
Rumour has it that RE and RBI board members have visited DivestmentWatch, and it has even come up during chats with the bankers (UBS) and the consultants (PWC) so it’s nice to know that there are some people interested and hopefully listening.
DivestmentWatch has had 5000+ unique visitors so far, and averages about 150 to 200 a day, with a regular core readership of about 50-60 (thanks for your support!). I hope that it has helped you in some way.
-TheOpsMgr
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Another one bites the dust…
Following on from earlier posts about management changes at RBI titles the Press Gazette comments on another departure.
” A management overhaul at business title Travel Weekly has seen the editor leave after under a year in charge. Sarah Longbottom, who joined the Reed Business Information magazine for travel agents and tour operators in June last year, has left the title in a restructuring that management said was to part of a new print/online strategy.”
Probably got nowt to do with the divestment but it’s RBI news all the same!
FTC looking at ChoicePoint deal…
Several media sources have reported that the US FTC have asked for an “extended investigation” into the ChoicePoint acquisition.
“U.S. antitrust enforcers are conducting an extended investigation into Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier’s planned $4.1 billion acquisition of ChoicePoint Inc , ChoicePoint said on Tuesday.
Merger deals are investigated by U.S. antitrust authorities to determine whether they would hobble competition and lead to higher prices. When an extended investigation is necessary, the FTC usually requires the companies to turn over large amounts of documents related to the deal.”
This will slow the actual acquisition down but “it is expected the transaction will close later in the year”… yet another distraction on the road to divesting RBI, frankly.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
A quick question for readers…
Since Blogger has a cute “poll” feature I thought I would ask a few questions of the readers over the next few weeks.
First up - “If you could buy your RBI Brand / Publication would you?”
Basically if the opportunity to do an MBO arose would you have enough faith in your brand to “put your money where your mouth is” as it were?
Please vote yes or no on the right hand side, and if you want expand on your answer please leave a comment to this post!
Two months further on…
Well, it is now just over two months since the announcement of the RBI divestment.
What do we know now that we didn’t know a month ago?
Well, we know that some people view the sale of RBI as a test for capital markets and private equity in the face of the current “credit crunch” - if people can’t raise the money to buy RBI then that says something (bad) about the markets, not just about the value of RBI.
We know that business goes on at RBI with new acquisitions, changes in senior management and Tad Smith having lunch with Time, Inc.
We’ve discussed what “One Company” is, and isn’t, and how there are ripples of unease in some parts of the business about the changes. We know that some staff are being laid off and some are being outsourced.
We’ve learnt even more about what to expect from a private equity acquisition courtesy of the head of a UK PE firm here, here and here. We got a lesson in private equity “media strategy 101” from the people that bought Media General.
We know that PWC is working on putting the prospectus together for the sale (a form of pre-sale due diligence). Apparently private equity is “inherently interested” in the divestment, but perhaps that’s just hype?
Storytelling and narrative as leadership techniques during times of change was also on the agenda. TheOpsMgr remains convinced that there are two stories (memes if you like) circulating at the heart of the divestment mythos - the “it’s not you , it’s me” story about the cyclical nature of advertising (positive spin) and the “no, it’s really you, print is an albatross and we are dumping your declining a*s” (negative spin). Which meme eventually dominiates the meme-pool will have a huge impact on how people view the divestment.
Thinking about post-divestment issues readers were invited to think about how they would restructure RBI and what they think the strategy should be going forward.
The topic of re-structuring lead on to an examination of RE company values (some borrowed from GE and Vodafone, to the surprise of some readers) and the important of understanding the culture of the organisation being acquired, and what sort of culture you want to create in the new company.
The big topic of course has been the continued speculation about what that new company would consist of… one global company, four separate geographical companies or even the US region itself being broken into multiple pieces. Gerard and Sir Crispin continue to stand firm that “one big sale” remains the preferred option that they are striving to achieve. Media maven “Marty” continues to believe that the break up is on the cards and in fact is a “done deal” that UBS are actively hawking round town. This speculation has also crossed over into semi-mainstream journalism at PaidContent.
And of course the “Marty and the Eunuch show” continues to entertain in the comments sections of some of the posts! Should said breakup not occur there are drinks on “Marty” at a London bar of TheOpsMgr’s choice (downstairs at the “Square Pig and S’Wine Bar“, please!).
Sadly the closing paragraph from my “one month summary” still pretty much holds true…
What we don’t know is who is going to buy us, for how much, by what process, when the formal handover will take place and what this will really mean for all RBI employees.
But I shall keep trying to find out - and hopefully some of the other topics discussed above will help you to prepare and make informed decisions about the future for you, your colleagues and your employees.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
B2B Ad network = BBN
The other news this week is that Reed Business Information has joined forces with other B2B publishers to create an online advertising network, which will be delivered by 24/7 RealMedia.
The press release states that there will be “more than 200 online properties involved in the network” with “10 million unique users”.
*** start of cynical commentary ***
Firstly, some background facts -
- RBI has more than “200 online properties”
- RBI UK community sites have 5 million unique users per month
- Totaljobs websites have 3 million unique users per month
- Variety.com has another 2 million unique users
So without much effort RBI could have created its own network of equivalent size.
Ok, I know that not all eyeballs are equal, and in specific B2B verticals RBI might not achieve “critical mass” to deliver enough page impressions but in many ways that is beside the point.
The point for me is one that strikes to the heart of why Reed Business is being divested… which is that it is now way behind the curve in defining the online marketplace in B2B advertising.
Take the ad-server partner 24/7 Real Media - founded in 1994 it has come from nothing to be worth USD$650M when acquired by WPP in 2007.
Surely it would not have been beyond the resources of Reed Business and Reed Elsevier to have created a similar ad serving network back in 1994, if it had had the vision? In fact, you could have argued that with its existing customer base it would have had a huge head start on new entrants like 24/7 Read Media.
I know that 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing e.g. why didn’t Reed Business start a search engine in 1998 and call it Google instead of starting one in 2006 and calling it Zibb but there is one fundamental difference between Google and 24/7 Real Media that highlights the difference between missed opportunity and 20/20 hindsight.
Google started as a “search algorithm that went looking for a business model” and eventually stumbled upon advertising.
Search algorithms aren’t Reed Business core business so it’s understandable that Reed Business wouldn’t have seen that one coming. The uber-cynical might point out that search and information retrieval is Lexis-Nexis’s core business but that’s probably still a step too far.
But advertising is Reed Business’s core business… so whilst it may be harsh it’s probably not totally unfair to say that Reed Business could have seen the 24/7 Real Media’s coming and headed them off at the pass… and potentially made themselves USD$650M richer in the process.
Did I mention that Google bought DoubleClick (founded 1996) for USD$3.1Bn… about USD$1Bn more than the current asking price for RBI?
To summarise my argument -
- RBI is now paying someone else to deliver ads
- With vision, RBI could have create such a network itself (or acquired a startup 10yrs) ago
- With vision, it could have delivered between $650M and $3.1Bn worth of value
- Without vision, it gets divested
Ok, it’s not a perfect syllogism but I am an OpsMgr, not a philosopher 
For those readers who are closer to the advertising and B2B markets I am keen to hear your views, if you think I am right, wrong, naive or stupid! Comments please!
*** end of cynical commentary ***
