Creditors could be set to stage a take-over of B2B publisher VNU Business Media Europe from owner 3i, according to Times Online, after the private equity group revealed (via interim management update) its top 50 investments have lost £681 million or 21 percent of their combined value and are now worth only £3.6 billion. 3i today confirmed CEO Phillip Yea has stepped down after five years in the role and is replaced by Michael Queen.
Times Online, citing a source close to 3i, reports that VNU is close to breaking its banking covenants and needs investment — meaning that 3i either has to put in more cash to VNU or face a creditor takeover, in a debt-for-equity swap. 3i has £500 million in debt and £1 billion in capital commitments, compared with £620 million in cash on its balance sheet. 3i bought B2B publisher VNU, which owns owned Accountancy Age and Computing before selling VNU UK to Incisive two years ago, at the height of what is now referred to as the boom in financial markets in 2006 for
This article contains a serious factual inaccuracy.
You state that VNU owns Computing and Accountancy Age – this is not correct.
Both publications were sold to Incisive Media in early 2007 and no longer have any links to VNU.
Any issues between 3i and VNU have absolutely no bearing on Computing or Accountancy Age.
Please remove references to both publications from this article.
Regards,
Bryan Glick
Editor, Computing
Incisive Media
This post has been amended to make it clear that VNU sold its UK titles to Incisive in 2007 and that Accountancy Age and Computing now have no links to VNU. We regret the error.
In addition to the previous flaw, VNU Europe is actually not VNU Europe anymore. NetMediaEurope bought the online assets in France, Germany, Italy and Spain from VNU in 2007.