Wolters Kluwer’s name popped up as a potential acquirer of Lombard Risk Management, a UK-based company
specialised in compliance and risk software tools. Depending on the takeover price Wolters Kluwer may be prepared
to pay, a deal would make sense in our view for it will help the company to further benefit from the growth
opportunities offered by the implementation of Solvency 2 and Basel 3. Although LRM is relatively small, it will also
help to lift the share of electronic revenues in relation to overall sales and therefore underpin organic growth going
forward.
Reed Elsevier is known to be rather resilient for economic downturns. Most of its ‘normal’ cyclicality is in Exhibitions and RBI. However, the current crisis is not a ‘normal’ crisis. Unlike previous downturns, there is very little to no room to give a boost to the economy by means of increased government spending, due to the sovereign debt problems. Will Reed Elsevier be resilient enough to deal with the effects of decreasing government spending as well?
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110808 Reed Elsevier - how resilient is resilient?