Top Right Group is trying to sell one of its main Middle Eastern ventures as the company continues to dispose of some of its non-core assets. The magazine and events company, formerly known as Emap, has been working on a sale of the Middle Eastern Economic Digest (MEED).
City sources said Top Right Group has been working with advisers from US investment bank Jefferies on a potential sale. The Guardian Media Group, publisher of The Guardian, owns a stake in Top Right Group alongside private equity firm Apax.
Industry sources thought the most that Top Right Group would get for MEED would be £35m. It is, however, not clear how far the MEED sale process has advanced. Sources said Jefferies started working with Top Right Group six weeks ago.
The first issue of Middle East Economic Digest was published in 1957. By the time Emap acquired MEED in 1986, it had a staff of 20 full-time journalists and 12 assistants to cover Middle Eastern business stories.
MEED now publishes a magazine and subscription-based website that provide “business intelligence” and analysis. The company also has an events business. The potential sale of MEED follows Top Right’s £175m disposal in May of car data provider, CAP, to Montagu Private Equity.
However, Duncan Painter, chief executive of Top Right Group, has downplayed rumours of a break-up of the company, despite the fact that in March he changed the group’s name, and split the group into three separate businesses.
Top Right kept the Emap name for its magazines operation, which publishes Nursing Times and Drapers. Top Right Group’s database business – whose assets include the fashion trend-forecaster WGSN – was renamed 4C Group, a play on the word “foresee”. The events unit, which includes World Retail Congress and Cannes Lions, was renamed i2i. Top Right Group declined to comment.
