Steve Monnington of Mayfield Merger Strategies reviews the recent deals in the global exhibitions market and looks at the possible sale of Clarion.
We’re halfway through 2025 and although M&A activity is relatively subdued – 26 reported transactions in the first six months compared to 63 in total last year – there are some fascinating potential deals emerging.
In this column we cover new acquisitions by CloserStill Media, Easyfairs, and Italian Exhibition Group as well as Messe Frankfurt’s strategic JV in China. We also check in on Blackstone’s process/progress in selling Clarion Events, what the sale of Centaur’s mini MBA business may mean for its future and whether Trump’s unpredictability on (amongst other things) trade tariffs is having an effect on exhibition M&A. First to the deals that were announced this month.
Easyfairs has acquired EPHJ – short for Environnement Professionnel Horlogerie Joaillerie – Switzerland’s largest trade show and the largest event in the world for high-precision engineering.
The event covers watchmaking, jewellery, microtechnology and medical technology and was launched in 2002. The founders, André Colard and Olivier Saenger, wanted to ensure that a proper succession and transition plan was put in place which preserved and built on what they had achieved since launch – a show with nearly 800 exhibitors and more than 23,000 visitors. EPHJ fits well with Easyfairs’ portfolio of engineering events and the current EPHJ team will continue to run the event.
CloserStill Media has acquired PARCEL Forum, the leading package fulfilment event in the US. The event was founded in 2003 by Joel Dunkel through his company EventEvolution Management Inc and rotates between different cities in the USA.
The 2025 show, to be held in Chicago in September, will have 135 exhibitors and around 2,000 attendees. This is CloserStill’s fourth acquisition in 2025 and is small compared to the others but it fits well with other events in its Future Transport Division (such as Parcel+Post Expo in Amsterdam) which was formed when it acquired UKI Media and Events in 2023. It also expands CloserStill’s US-based portfolio to more than 25 events.
Having concentrated its acquisition activity in Brazil over the last couple of years, Italian Exhibition Group (IEG) return to its home country buying a majority stake in Movestro S.r.l, organiser of IBF – the Italian Bike Festival.
IBF was launched in 2018 in Rimini and has grown into one of Europe’s top cycling festivals, attracting 600+ brands and around 57,000 visitors in 2024. IEG has a number of sports and wellness exhibition brands in Italy including Expo BeActive, RiminiWellness and the Rimini Off-Road show.
There has been a scarcity of M&A news coming out of China over the last couple of years, the notable exception being the acquisition of VNU’s China business by Advent International in early 2024 and a couple of follow-on deals.
GL Events made a small acquisition in the vetinerary sector in May this year but the other big established international organisers seem to be sitting on their hands while they wait to see whether there is any clarity on the trade tariff situation.
What we may well get now is strategic alliances rather than acquisitions such as the co-operation between Messe Frankfurt and Golden Osmanthus Culture Group through its subsidiary, Notes Shanghai Exhibition Co for the co-organisation of Notes Shanghai, a leading trade fair dedicated to China’s niche fragrance sector.
It’s a logical combination – Wu Yue, founder of Notes Shanghai, has a background in fragrance chemistry and is recognised as a key figure in developing China’s domestic fragrance ecosystem whilst Messe Frankfurt organises the Beautyworld series of eight events across the Middle East and Asia.
Centaur Media has sold its MiniMBA programme, which concentrates a full MBA program for marketing and brand management into 12-week courses, to digital marketing firm Brave Bison for £19m. This raises the interesting question about what happens to the rest of the group.
MiniMBA was Centaur’s largest brand and in 2024 represented 31% of total revenue. It leaves The Lawyer publication (25% of revenue), the marketing events and publishing portfolio – Marketing Week, Festival of Marketing, Creative Review – (12%) and the Industry Intelligence and Consultancy businesses (22%).
In 2019 Centaur sold most of its exhibition business through a series of non-core disposals. The Travel division, consisting of the Business Travel Show, Meetings show and Travel Technology Europe, was sold to U.S based Northstar Travel Group. The HR division – Employee Benefits Live, Employee Benefits Connect and the Forum for Expatriate Management was sold to DVV Media International, the UK subsidiary of German publisher DVV Media GmbH whilst the Engineering division – The Engineer magazine and Subcon exhibition – were acquired by Mark Allen Group.
Post the MiniMBA sale, the remaining business is rather small for a PLC company (the remaining portfolio represents less than £25m revenue) and the shareholders may decide that a continuing breakup represents the best way to maximise shareholder value. Expect more sale processes unless the Board decides to utilise some of the significant cash reserves they have built up with some acquisitions of their own. Either way, something will happen
Looking forward to what may happen later this year, several M&A news sources have reported that Blackstone, owner of Clarion Events, have initiated a sale process.
Blackstone acquired Clarion in 2017 for around £600m and later in the same year separately acquired Hong Kong-based Global Sources for $20 per share which, although a purchase price wasn’t announced, would put the deal value at around $485m based on the number of shares in issue. In early 2018 Global Sources was merged into Clarion as it didn’t make sense to have the two event companies operating independently.
With a suggested valuation for the overall business of £2bn, this should be another private equity transaction. It’s doubtful that Clarion would have directly acquired Global Sources by choice and ironically, with the uncertainty surrounding U.S trade tariffs, the ownership of Global Sources represents the biggest challenge towards getting a deal for the overall business away.
Global Sources connects Asian manufacturers (mainly Chinese) with international buyers, primarily in the electronics, gifts, fashion, and home products sectors and therefore the impact on the business of increased tariffs would be significant. The story will doubtless unfold over the coming months.
We are apparently already seeing the downside of tariff uncertainty on exhibition M&A. A Media Operator (AMO), a paid membership community for the media and digital publishing space, has reported that fears over potential tariff increases stopped Easyfairs from acquiring US media company Questex in April this year.
AMO research its stories carefully but naturally both companies refused to comment although, according to AMO, Easyfairs did confirm that Questex is on its radar as an acquisition target. If the story is correct and, if things settle down on the tariff front, we could see this transaction happening later in the year.
Meanwhile, several M&A sale processes are continuing and many M&A directors from some of the acquisitive organisers have been spotted attending independently owned events. Here at Mayfield Towers we have a strong pipeline of deals we are working on so despite some of the politically driven issues that could impact some of the deals, M&A is alive and well.
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