Weller nets £11m as Apax buys Incisive

Saeed Shah
Friday 22 September 2006 00:13 BST
Comments

Tim Weller's stake in Incisive Media, the business-to-business publisher he started in 1995, is worth some £11m under a deal announced yesterday to sell the company to the private equity firm Apax Partners for £199m.

Mr Weller, who started the business after convincing his backers to put up £275,000, will take around £8m in cash, but he and three other directors will roll 30 per cent of their after-tax proceeds into the buyout, which they will continue to run.

In return for a £5.9m investment, the managers will be awarded an 11.9 per cent stake in the business, worth £23.7m at the deal valuation.

Mr Weller, 45, started the company after he was hired by Reuters to start a magazine, only to realise that Reuters would not carry through the plan. That magazine concept was Investment Week, a publication for financial advisers, which became the first publication for Incisive.

The company began with 13 staff, some borrowed furniture and an office with a hole in the roof. Its publications now include Legal Week, Insurance Age and the British Journal of Photography. Incisive, which listed in 2000, yesterday reported first-half revenues up 33 per cent at £32.9m.

Mr Weller said he was "sad" to leave the public arena but there were too many constraints on the company's acquisition strategy as a listed company. "I want to run a much, much, bigger company. The board has discussed a number of transactions that we could not follow through on," Mr Weller said.

He said the quoted company could not borrow heavily - high leverage is the basis of the private equity business model - and Incisive shares traded at a discount to the sector, making equity issuance difficult. In recent years, among the businesses that the company has tried and failed to buy were Investors Chronicle and a collection of other business titles from Pearson and also Centaur, another trade magazine publisher.

"The discount was extremely frustrating. We delivered above-market growth, the highest operating margins in the sector and we have never issued a profits warning," Mr Weller said.

Analysts said the agreed buyout price, 195p a share - a 13 per cent premium to the company's closing share price on Wednesday - was not particularly racy and below the valuation recently put on Metal Bulletin, which was bought by Euromoney.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in