LONDON, May 14 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Academic and business publisher Informa Plc has agreed to buy Datamonitor Plc in a deal that values the market analysis firm at around 502 million pounds ($993 million), it said on Monday.
Informa said it would pay 650 pence per share in cash for Datamonitor and expected to save 3 million pounds in annual costs with the deal enhancing earnings from its first full year.
"Combining the businesses will enhance growth prospects and margins," David Gilbertson, managing director of Informa said.
The group said the deal represented a premium of around 2.2 percent to the closing price of 636 pence of each Datamonitor share on Friday.
Last November Informa rejected a 2.7 billion-pound offer from Germany's Springer Science & Business Media saying it significantly undervalued the London-based company.
Informa is the world's largest publicly owned organiser of conferences and courses and runs more than 10,000 events annually.
Its publishing brands include Lloyd's List for the maritime industry and Scrip, which covers the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
Shares in Informa, which have outperformed the UK media sector by 16 percent over the last 12 months, closed at 621-1/2 pence on Friday, valuing the group at around 2.4 billion pounds.
Datamonitor shares closed at 636 pence.
bdnews24.com/srs/1305 hrs
