Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Impact of VNU deal

David Shaw picks up on the point that had grabbed my attention concerning VNU's huge ($7 billion) acquisition of IMS, the market-leading medical market research firm:

A View on VNU:

VNU: The New Face Of Trade Publishing

The good bloggers at Shore Communications have an interesting analysis of the VNU acquisition of IMS.

Key grab: The new model in trade publishing centers on a mix of analytical research, consulting services, and conferences with traditional publishing products like research reports and periodicals included in the mix, but not playing the starring role.

(Via B or not 2B--A Business Media Blog.)

Having spent that much money, we assume that the VNU management is going to be rather focused on the challenges of achieving synergies between IMS and AC Neilson (with which good luck!). Can't imagine our friends in the publishing and events division getting to large a slice of whatever cake is left for business development or, for that matter, top management attention.

Mind you, this may take some of the heat off China business development leaving the teams there to get on with trying to build there businesses one step at a time.

Update: have a look also at Paul Conley's posting on this with some interesting insights into the type of deal it is.

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