Reed Business

As an update to yesterday's post about RBI's CEO van de Aast, Bloomberg is reporting that bids may come in at around $1bill. which is half the amount expected. What is unknown is whether that figure assumes an ownership stake in the divested business. For example, if Reed retained a 40% ownership in RBI (admittedly a lot) then this would translate to a value of $1.4billion which is still substantially less than the proposed amount almost a year ago but not as bad as the half off sale price. If the $1bill is for 100% then Reed is in a pickle since they may not want to take such a low price but they don't have a CEO. Not forgetting that they have debt to pay back for Choicepoint.