ICE Organiser Clarion Sells to Providence Equity for £200 Million
Clarion Events, the leading exhibition and conference organiser that brings to the global gaming world the highly successful business-to-business (B2B) events International Casino Exhibit (ICE) Totally Gaming, Global iGaming Summit and Expo (GiGSE) and Excellence in iGaming), has sold its business to Providence Equity, a UK-based international asset management corporation.
Providence Equity’s bid of over £200 million reportedly defeated the amounts tendered by the other competing buyers such as Charterhouse Capital Partners, the Carlyle Group LP, the ITE Group, and the Penton Media. Clarion announced the sell out to its staff last January 09, 2015, comprising around 500 employees deployed in nine offices located in different parts of the world; namely Brazil, Germany, Singapore, South Africa, The Netherlands, Turkey, the UAE, U.S. and the UK.
Providence Equity previously gave indications that the company, which specialises in communication, education, information, and media industries, is seeking to expand aggressively by investing in both large and small acquisitions. Since its founding in 1989, the firm accumulated over $40 billion worth of assets under its management, while maintaining investments in more than 140 corporate organisations. The global asset management company is said to have fought hard to clinch the Clarion acquisition deal during the second and final bidding round, especially against strong bidder Carlyle Group.
After all, Clarion is into organising a wide range of events not only for the gaming and gambling industry, but also for other key sectors such as defence and security, oil and gas, power and utilities, telecommunication, payments solutions, and life sciences, which is just to mention a few. The globally renowned events organiser also holds business-to-consumer (B2C) trade exhibits for housing, travel, and even parenting. There are speculations though that the fate of online gaming exhibit EiG, hangs on a balance, since its showing in the recent past years was not as successful as hoped for by the company. Clarion’s more popular ICE Totally Gaming summit is all set to take place on February 03 to 05, 2015 at the ExCeL Centre in London.
Many regard Clarion’s 200 or so events as effective platforms for building businesses, as the company makes it a point to create stimulating environments that could attract buyers, particularly those with decision-making authority. In organising events, Clarion remains focused on its primary objective, which is to put the innovations and solutions providers directly in contact with buyers with spending abilities. It attributes the successes of its events to its capability to identify high value and the target audience in hard-to-reach markets.
Established back in 1947, Clarion had completed a dozen acquisition deals, for which Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) is the twelfth buyer and the most recent Clarion seller. VSS purchased Clarion from HG Capital in 2008 in exchange for £120 million; denoting, therefore that VSS made a large profit of £80 million at the least, from the Providence Equity sale. HG Capital also benefited substantially from selling Clarion to VSS, since the HGC paid former Clarion parent company Earls Court & Olympia, £50 million as buy out settlement.
