Informa said it will acquire Clarion Events from Blackstone for £2.24 billion in cash, an enterprise value that includes certain tax benefits. The price is 11.1 times Clarion’s expected 2027 EBITDA, falling to about nine times after £50 million of identified annual run-rate cost savings, with a further £25 million of targeted revenue synergies by 2029 at one-off delivery costs of around £50 million.
Clarion, bought by Blackstone in 2017 for a reported £600 million, is expected to generate more than £575 million of revenue in 2027 at an adjusted operating margin above 30 percent. Its portfolio spans more than 100 specialist B2B brands, including IFA Berlin in consumer electronics, DSEI in defence and security, and ICE in gaming, which give Informa immediate scale in three growth categories. Chief executive Lisa Hannant will stay and join Informa’s executive leadership team, rolling part of her equity into Informa shares.
Informa will fund the deal with acquisition debt and an equity raise of about £940 million through an institutional placing and a retail offer, roughly 9 percent of its share capital, while pausing its share buyback. It expects net debt to stay below three times EBITDA at year end, a mid-single-digit boost to 2027 adjusted earnings per share, and a post-tax return on invested capital above 10 percent by 2029.
In the same announcement Informa launched a formal review of its Taylor & Francis academic publishing division, which it says is approaching $1 billion in revenue, with results due in March 2027. The separation would leave Informa as a pure-play B2B live events operator with group revenue above $6 billion.