Hot on the heels of the news of wage freezes and job cuts in the US arm of RBI this report from Press Gazette states that 35 of their UK staff are also being shown the exit.
Given the parlous state of the market and the fact that no one at Reed Elsevier actually wants to keep RBI going, these won’t be the last of the losses; more interesting than these little bits of pruning will be the titles that get closed down or which go web only. (more…)
More on RBI, this from The Times
[The] sale of Reed … appears to be struggling, with no bids close to the mooted £1.25 billion price. One bidder to have made it through to the second round has indicated its bid was nowhere near £1 billion and there is talk the unit may be worth as little as £800 million.
If the process drags on much further my original bid of half a crown and a nuttals minto may be the most generous – and I’m starting to have second thoughts about the minto.
The RBI sale is obviously going wonderfully well. According to a report in the Telegraph the company is trying to put together a £750m loan to anyone that will buy the company in one piece. Given that the asking price for the whole package is £1.25bn it means that if anyone does want to buy the group they will only have to find £500m of their own (or, more likely, further borrowed) cash.
Of course it’s one thing to insist on the sale taking place in one bundle, but I imagine it will be difficult to insist that every magazine and every division remains intact after the sale. The opportunity obviously exists for someone to borrow the money from Reed to buy RBI and then sell off parts of the business (this used to be called ‘asset stripping’) to pay off the money borrowed. (more…)
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