Informa To Buy ICE Owner Clarion In £2.24bn B2B Events Deal
Informa plc has agreed to acquire Clarion Events, the B2B live events group that owns the ICE gaming trade show, in a deal worth approximately £2.24 billion, the London-listed company confirmed on October 6.
The B2B gambling supply chain has seen a wave of consolidation this year, and Clarion's events portfolio spans exhibitions, conferences and trade media across multiple industries, with gaming and gambling among its largest categories through the ICE brand, long one of the sector's biggest annual gatherings.
Funding The Deal
To help fund the acquisition, Informa said it intends to raise gross proceeds of roughly £940 million through an equity issue.
The structure includes a non-pre-emptive placing to institutional investors, a retail offer through RetailBook giving UK retail investors a chance to buy shares at the placing price, and a subscription by directors and the executive management team worth up to £1.6 million.
The placing is being run as an accelerated bookbuild, launched immediately after the announcement, with Morgan Stanley acting as sole global coordinator and joint bookrunner alongside BofA Securities and Deutsche Bank.
Informa said the equity issue has been structured to minimise execution and market risk, noting that it consulted a number of institutional shareholders ahead of launch to gauge feedback on the proposed terms.
The company intends to respect pre-emption principles when allocating shares to participating existing shareholders, while also allowing new investors to participate.
Informa's largest institutional shareholder has already indicated that it plans to participate in the placing on a pro rata basis.
A Separate Business Update
The acquisition was announced alongside a separate Company Update in which Informa confirmed that current trading remains on track to meet full-year expectations.
That update also detailed Informa's intention to separate its Taylor & Francis academic publishing business, a move the group frames as part of a broader strategy to concentrate on its core B2B operations.
Buying Clarion aligns with that same direction of travel, deepening Informa's position in B2B Live Events at a time when in-person trade shows and conferences remain a significant revenue driver for exhibitors across online casinos, gaming, construction, energy, and other verticals.
According to the official stock exchange announcement filed via the London Stock Exchange's regulatory news service, the enterprise value attached to Clarion is approximately £2.24 billion, making this one of the larger M&A transactions in the global events and exhibitions space this year.
The filing stresses that the announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer of securities in several jurisdictions, including the United States, Australia, Canada and Japan, reflecting standard restrictions on cross-border placing announcements of this kind.
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What It Means For Gaming
For the gaming industry specifically, a change of ownership at Clarion carries some weight given ICE's role as a focal point for operator, supplier and regulator networking each year.
Informa already operates a large portfolio of B2B information and events businesses, and folding Clarion's gaming-facing assets into that structure could add scale to sponsorship, data, and media products wrapped around the show, though neither company detailed specific plans for ICE's future format in the announcement.
The deal remains subject to the completion of the equity raise and other customary conditions before it can close.
