MidOcean Partners ("MidOcean"), a middle market private equity firm, and Wasserstein & Co. ("Wasserstein"), an independent private equity and investment firm, have entered into a definitive agreement to sell Penton, an innovative professional information services company, to Informa plc ("Informa") for $1.56 billion. The consideration will consist of $1.46 billion of cash (plus adjustments) and $100 million of Informa stock.
Under MidOcean and Wasserstein ownership, Penton has been significantly transformed from predominantly a print business into a preeminent professional information services company. Penton has successfully completed 13 acquisitions, creating scaled positions in growth-oriented sectors—including agriculture, transportation, natural products/food, infrastructure, and industrial design/manufacturing sectors. Penton currently has seven of the top 250 largest trade shows in the U.S., which have helped drive an event revenue CAGR of over 20% over the last four years.
Additional significant investments have been made to create an industry leading team that has built a state of the art digital platform, launched numerous SaaS products and built a scaled and fast- growing digital content marketing services business.
The transaction, which is subject to approval by Informa shareholders and customary regulatory and closing conditions, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2016.
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