UBM is, on the face of it, paying a chunky price for becoming the No 1 events business in the British market. The purchase of Advanstar will mean about 42 per cent of its events business will come from the United States, where about 42 per cent of the world exhibitions industry is situated.
Job done, then, for a company that indicated in the summer that it was under-represented in North America, as opposed to the emerging markets in places such as southeast Asia that have tended to provide the growth in recent years for quoted exhibition companies.
UBM, though, is paying $972 million to buy Advanstar from the hedge fund and private equity companies that own it. This is equivalent to 4.5 times revenues,