The cover stories for the March/April 2008 issue of ONLINE were about private equity and the information industry. It appears as if private equity companies are still on the move. Hot on the heels of news that Informa and United Business Media are in merger talks, the next rumor was that Candover and Cinven is considering making a bid for Informa as well. Informa owns many of the brands and products familiar to information professionals. They’ve got Citeline (clinical trials info), Clinica (a newsletter for the device and diagnostic industry), Datamonitor, IBC (market research), Insurance Daily (a newspaper for the industry), Lloyds (which includes Lloyds List and other shipping information), Ovum (more market research), Patent World, Pharmaprojects, Routledge (publisher), Scrip (newsletter for the pharmaceutical industry), Taylor & Francis (publisher), and Verdict Research, among others. UBM owns PR Newswire and CMP (publisher of hundreds of trade press titles). Candover, partnership with Cinven, owns Springer Science + Business Media (acquired in September 2003 for $1.23 billion). It also owned Bureau van Dijk from 2004 to 2007. What would it mean to researchers if either Candover or UBM acquired Informa? That’s hard to say. As Richard Hulser said in his March/April article, there are both benefits and drawbacks to private equity’s involvement with information companies. Certainly the trade press elements of the Informa portfolio fit very well with UBM’s CMP business. Its pharmaceutical products fit well with Springer. The question really is whether either potential acquirer would leave Informa as is or split it up into niches. It’s easy to see how to carve out pharma, insurance, and market research, possibly even general publishing. Who benefits the most if Informa is acquired? Apparently it’s the company’s new finance director, according to a story in the Telegraph, who will take home about $400,000 if he’s made redundant. Nice money for a few months’ work.

The Advance Program for WebSearch University in Washington DC in September (preconference workshops the 21st; conference the 22nd and 23rd) arrived in my mailbox today. It looks pretty slick, if I do say so myself. We’ve got 10 "faculty members" this year, tackling a bunch of both new and old topics. But in the wacky world of websearch, there are no old topics. There may be old titles, but what one says about the topic will be new. I’m particularly pleased that we’ve got subject experts like Christina Pikas, Laura Gordon-Murnane, and Bob Berkman joining us this year. Danny Sullivan is going to bring us up to date on what the search engine companies are doing. And expert searchers Mary Ellen Bates, Ran Hock, Greg Notess, Gary Price, and Genie Tyburski are back to share their knowledge.

I just know this is going to be one of the best WebSearch Universities ever!

SAGE just bought book publisher CQ Press from Times Publishing. CQ Press was part of Congressional Quarterly Inc., which is based in Washington DC and has about 150 reporters, editors and researchers who cover US politics and public policy. It’s a unit of Times Publishing Company, based in St. Petersburg, Florida. The parent company publishes the St. Petersburg Times, a daily newspaper. I gather Times Publishing wants to concentrate its efforts on news in Washington and Florida, so sold off the book, directory, and research publisher to focus on the core businesses of CQ and St Pete Times. Sage says it will keep CQ Press just as is. It will be a separate division, stay in the District, and retain all employees and executives, including Publisher and President of CQ Press, John Jenkins, who has been with CQ since 1998, following stints at the Cobb Group, Questel-Orbit, and BNA. Call me cynical, but that’s what they all say.

Back in 1999, CQ bought Legislate from the Washington Post and is a trusted name in political news circles. SAGE should be a good home for CQ Press, since it has a strong presence in the academic market for both journals and books, not to mention the electronic formats so attractive to digital libraries.