The Reed Is Bending from Winds of Change
October 6, 2010
I don’t pay much attention to the traditional publishing sector. Most of my attention goes to data fusion, an area of considerable promise. Traditional publishing is not into data fusion the way it is practiced by Fetch Technologies, Digital Reasoning, and other up and coming outfits.
I did try to work my way through “Reed Business Information Gets Sued for Computer Usage Violations.” I was confused by the litany of executive changes and passages like this one:
Anglo-Dutch multinational Reed Elsevier is in debt to the tune of billions of US dollars and has been desperately trying to pay it off, even going as far as trying to sell RBI in 2008. Yes that is the year 2008 when the world financial markets were in the worst situation since the 1929 Wall Street crash. So bad was it that Reed Elsevier had to arrange what is called “vendor financing” for RBI’s sale. Meaning it had to get a group of banks to offer any buyer of RBI what money was needed to clinch the deal.
My goodness. The article explains a legal dust up and allegations of a traditional publisher using computer technology to make life exciting for another outfit.
If the write up is accurate, I may have to start tracking the traditional publishing sector again. Exciting stuff. Desperate times, desperate measures. I thought these executives played golf and croquet too.
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2010
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One Response to “The Reed Is Bending from Winds of Change”
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They were desperate to sell this business – not just for the debt reasons but also because they realized that the era of events as a big profit engine had passed. They were probably too late in this realization.
In the end, they couldn’t sell it and are still trying to make it work.
There is some interesting innovation going on in this group, however, specifically in the “pay for performance” area.