Times still tough for Reed Elsevier
Jinfo Blog

20th February 2010

By Tim Buckley Owen

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LexisNexis is one of the few relatively bright spots amid grim results posted by publishing conglomerate Reed Elsevier for 2009. Disposals of Reed Business Information titles are set to continue as commentators speculate on the entire group’s future. LexisNexis’s core law firm business was flat in the United States and marginally lower internationally, the report says (http://digbig.com/5bbcqk). It was the ChoicePoint risk management business that contributed effectively all of LN’s revenue and profit growth. But LexisNexis continues to innovate, regularly playing leapfrog with its arch rival Westlaw (see Michele Bate’s recent report at http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27853 for example). Reed’s report says that ‘good progress is being made in developing the next generation of legal research products and the advanced back office infrastructure to support them’. Further innovation is evident in the proposed formation by LexisNexis Risk Solutions and the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers of an insurance exchange, with tools developed by intellectual property development company Marketcore (http://digbig.com/5bbcqm). In addition, paidContent:UK has reported that LexisNexis is one of two possible purchasers of the Russian-developed visual search engine Quintura – the other being Dialog’s owner ProQuest (http://digbig.com/5bbcqn). But times nevertheless remain tough for Reed Elsevier generally. It continues to sell titles from business-to-business publisher Reed Business Information where it can (see http://digbig.com/5bbcqp for example) and, as the report rather obliquely states, ‘re-engineering of portfolio and costs will continue’. Last November the company sacked its chief executive Ian Smith, and his replacement Erik Engstrom almost immediately announced a review of the business that could lead to asset sale (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27042). One analyst at the time mulled over the possibility of selling off LexisNexis, possibly even to Westlaw owner Thomson Reuters (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e26877), although Engstrom appears to have ruled that out at present, saying ‘I am personally very happy that we own this business’ (http://digbig.com/5bbcqq). But in the absence of ideas coming out of Reed yet, the Sunday Times reported recently that analysts were coming up with their own – including possibly a complete break-up of the group (http://digbig.com/5bbcqr). When you add in the future impact of open access (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27430), legal information professionals will need to keep a close eye on developments.

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