Lloyd’s List group mulls bid for Springer

Informa, the professional publisher behind Lloyd’s List, approached Springer Science & Business Media over a potential takeover of the German group.
Early stage talks began about three weeks ago between Informa and Springer, according to a person close to the negotiations.
Candover and Cinven, the private equity owners of Springer, have been looking for up to €500 million (£450 million) for the sale of a 49 per cent stake in the business in a bid to reduce the publisher’s debt burden of about €2.16 billion.
However, initial bids fell short of their expectations this year and it is reported that interested buyers of the whole group would hope to spend under €400 million, as Springer’s impending debt maturities have forced the sellers to reduce their valuation.

In October, Derk Haank, the chief executive of Springer, said that they were now considering a full sale of the company.
“For a while we were considered underleveraged, now we are considered overleveraged . . . a straight sale is the preferred option,” he said.
Carlyle, Providence and Apax were understood to be interested in the asset now that a sale of the entire company is on the table.
Informa, which has a net debt of almost £1 billion, may have to consider tapping shareholders for a second time to fund a deal. Last May it raised about £242 million via a rights issue.
Springer Science was formed in 2003 when Candover and Cinven merged BertelsmannSpringer with Kluwer Academic Publishing, which was financed with a €810 million leveraged loan arranged by Barclays, according to Thomson Reuters data.
The two private equity firms took advantage of the hot debt market to recapitalise the company’s debt in 2004, 2006 and 2007, also through Barclays.
The private equity firms used the debt to pay themselves large dividends, but more than doubled Springer’s borrowings.
A spokesman for Informa declined to comment. Springer was unavailable for comment.

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