We've just received an update from BNP Paribas' professional publishing research division indicating that.....

On 2 July Informa announced that a consortium of private equity firms had made a proposal to acquire the group for 506p/share, 18% above the closing price of the day.

BNP Paribas write.....This valuation underpins the attractiveness of Informa's assets and also reflects the potential benefit of a break-up. Private equity firms in the consortium own professional information assets such as Nielsen and could benefit from consolidating their assets.

Here at HOB we aren't finance writers so here's their advice in full

The largest LBO since the credit crunch last summer. We believe that the current share price discount (to the proposed offer)
reflects the risk of private equity firms withdrawing before completion in the wake of their due diligence or financing issues involving credit liquidity. However, we believe there is capacity in the European and US institutional credit markets to finance an additional GBP500m of new debt to be loaded onto Informa's balance sheet.

We have trimmed our forecasts, but believe operating trends remain robust. Following the recent pre-close trading update, we have trimmed our 2008e and 2009e EPS by 4% and 5%, respectively to reflect the cyclical slowdown in theUS corporate Performance Improvement unit. Early re-bookings for 2009 large-scale events are said to be progressing well, while cost cutting should protect the profitability of small conferences.

An attractive risk/reward profile
We have cut our target price from 540p to 506p in anticipation of a successful completion of the deal. Informa trades in line with its peers, yet its organic revenue growthprofile (5% in 2008e) is one of the most attractive within European Media. Bid speculation is likely to continue to drive the share price out performance, in our view.

What interests us at HOB is that private equity obviously sees a return from the professional publishing market... and leads us to think about Lexis Nexis and the possibility that they may be trying to sell their practice management group...will they manage to generate interest from private equity as well?