17 Best Media, Information & Events M&A Advisors in 2026

17 Best Media, Information & Events M&A Advisors in 2026

Last updated: September 2026 · Last verified: September 2026

TL;DR. "Media M&A" is four markets sharing one keyword, the Four-Currency Media Market. Subscription and information assets price on recurring revenue: Informa sold £200M of Intelligence revenue at 28x EBITDA and bought £600M of events revenue at c. 11x (Informa Rule 2.7, July 24, 2024). Events price on show economics: Apollo took Emerald private at an estimated $1.5B enterprise value (Emerald 8-K, May 11, 2026), completed July 14, 2026 (Emerald 8-K, July 14, 2026). Agencies and adtech price on EBITDA with the consideration deferred: Perion paid $27.5M at closing of a $65M headline for Greenbids (Perion 6-K, May 13, 2025). Consumer media prices in filings only: Paramount Skydance's pending bid values Warner Bros. Discovery at $110B, 7.5x fully synergized 2026 EBITDA (Paramount Skydance 8-K, March 2, 2026). The 2026 backdrop is the AI-Search Referral Shock: People Inc. reported Core Sessions down 6%, 17% and 22% in Q3 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026, each attributed to Google AI Overviews (People Inc. 10-Q, August 3, 2026), and only 27% of tracked media deals disclose terms (Berkery Noyes, 1H 2026). Ranked on adviser-of-record evidence: JEGI LEONIS, Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, LUMA Partners, Progress Partners, Berkery Noyes, Intrepid Investment Bankers, Allen & Company, Goldman Sachs, Centerview Partners, Evercore, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, J.P. Morgan, LionTree, Qatalyst Partners, Moelis & Company and Arma Partners. I run Peony, a data room used by 6,800+ customers, the room the process runs in, not an adviser.

Why is "media M&A" four markets rather than one?

Because a subscription-data business, a trade show, an agency and a studio are priced in four currencies, sold to four buyer sets and advised by benches that do not overlap. I'm Sean Yu, co-founder of Peony, a data room company used by 6,800+ customers. I have built and watched thousands of data rooms across my career: about 1,000 of those when I was an investor at two funds with a combined $6.3 billion in AUM, and the rest across the 6,800+ teams Peony serves today, where the founders we work with have raised over $18 billion to date. This guide is for a B2B information or subscription-data founder at $10M-$150M of revenue whose renewal book is fine and whose search traffic is not; an events owner with a flagship show and a deferred-revenue balance; an agency or adtech founder offered a headline price and asking how much arrives at closing; and, for context only, a consumer media board whose advisers are in an SEC filing.

A media M&A advisor is an investment bank or boutique that runs the sale, recapitalization or capital raise of a media, information, events or marketing business on the owner's behalf. For the label distinctions see M&A advisor vs broker vs investment bank; this post sits under the best M&A advisors hub beside our technology, software and consumer products benches, and the strategic buyer map, Informa, RELX, Ziff Davis and the sponsors, is in the lane sections below; for venture-stage capital rather than acquirers see our media investors directory.

I built the bench on one standard, the Adviser-of-Record Ledger, a Peony-original evidence standard: a firm earns a rank only if I could find a dated media, information, events or marketing adviser-of-record credit in a primary source, an SEC filing, a UK Rule 2.7 announcement, a party's own release, or the firm's own dated release or tombstone; where the evidence is thin the profile says so. Peony is the room the process runs in, not an adviser. Buyers should start with how to acquire a company.

What has AI search done to media valuations in 2026?

It has split every media business into the revenue that arrives through a search box and the revenue that does not, and buyers now price the two separately. That is the AI-Search Referral Shock; the underwriting frame it forces, the Session Split, a Peony-original frame, rests on an SEC-filed quarterly series rather than a survey. People Inc., formerly IAC and the publisher of PEOPLE, Allrecipes and Investopedia, reports Core Sessions across its named sites down 6% in Q3 2025, 17% in Q1 2026 and 22% in Q2 2026, each quarter's 10-Q attributing the decline "primarily to the impact of the increasing prominence of Google AI Overviews on Google search sessions," and the Q2 2026 filing adding that it expects the impact to extend to advertising revenue. In the same filing, Digital revenue still rose 6% to $289.9M because non-session-based revenue grew. Sessions collapsing, revenue defended by moving off the session, in one company's own metric, not a sector statistic.

The dates matter for your own traffic chart. Google rolled AI Overviews out to everyone in the United States on May 14, 2024, and to more than 100 countries the week of October 28, 2024 (Google, October 2024). Pew Research Center's browsing-panel study of 68,879 Google searches in March 2025 found users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared and 15% when it did not, and clicked a link inside the summary on 1% (Pew, July 22, 2025). Google's own claim is that links inside AI Overviews get more clicks than a traditional listing of the same page; the two measure different things.

Do buyers discount media businesses for Google referral dependency?

Yes, and the discount is applied to a cohort, not to the company. A buyer asks for sessions by source, by property and by quarter, eight quarters back, plus the split between session-based and non-session-based revenue; a seller who cannot produce that is diligenced at the low end of Berkery Noyes's $10M-$80M band, 1.7x revenue, not the 2.5x band above $80M.

Is my archive an AI licence, and does it change the multiple?

Only if a licence is signed or the archive is licensable on terms a buyer can read, and the filed evidence is one publisher's and two years old: John Wiley & Sons told the SEC in September 2024 that it had executed a second GenAI content rights project with a large tech company and attributed Learning-segment growth to demand for its content in training generative-AI models (Wiley 8-K, September 5, 2024). A signed licence is a recurring revenue line capitalised in the information lane, and its term, exclusivity, revenue recognition and contributor consents are diligence documents; unsigned, the buyer is pricing an unexercised option, and almost no seller has the file organised.

Which advisers actually closed the media, information and events deals on the tape, 2024-26?

A short set of banks, three boutiques with filed or dated credits, and many deals that disclose no banker at all. The Adviser-of-Record Ledger below is every 2024-2026 media, information, events, agency and adtech transaction where I could read the adviser roster in a primary document, with the value as the source states it and the status as of September 15, 2026.

Bottom line: eleven deals, and the specialist boutiques appear on exactly three, Harte Hanks, Greenbids and IMN; the two that print a number are both below $70M of consideration, and the third prints none. "Who advised the $110 billion deal" is a matter of public record; "who advised the $40 million deal" usually is not.

Most media deals disclose no bankers at all. Informa's TechTarget combination (completed December 2, 2024), Omnicom's merger with Interpublic (November 26, 2025) and Axel Springer's purchase of Telegraph Media Group (June 30, 2026, after approvals in the UK, Ireland and Austria) name no financial adviser in their releases. Lower-middle-market deals generate no SEC filing at all, and Berkery Noyes's methodology note says that of 2,549 media and marketing transactions it tracked from 1H 2024 to 1H 2026, only 690 disclosed financial terms, 27.1%, our arithmetic. A list that says a firm "advised on" a private media deal without a filing, a dated release or a party's statement behind it is asserting, not reporting.

Which M&A adviser has closed the most B2B events business deals?

Nobody who calls themselves an events banker, because no firm in this bench publishes a dedicated events or trade-show practice. Call it the Events Bench Gap, a Peony-original finding, and it has three layers. At the top, generalists named in filings: Goldman Sachs as exclusive financial adviser to Emerald, "America's largest producer of trade shows," on Apollo's take-private; LionTree and J.P. Morgan for Hyve's sellers; Morgan Stanley for Informa, with BofA Securities and Goldman Sachs joint for Ascential. In the middle, information boutiques with events tags: JEGI LEONIS is the only firm here that names a "B2B Information and Events" sector group and an "Events and Conferences" transaction filter, and it publishes dated events credits: EventWorks' merger and recapitalization with Quest Events, December 6, 2023; Executive Platforms' investment from Falfurrias Capital Partners, July 11, 2023; and Delinian's sale of IMN to Informa, October 10, 2024. Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips tags three undated deals "Events," including VidCon's sale to Informa. At the operator layer, one person: Berkery Noyes's Managing Director for Media, Trade Shows and Events, David Loechner, was CEO and President of Emerald Expositions, led its carve-out from Nielsen through over 16 acquisitions in five years and a 2017 IPO, and that company is the one Apollo took private on July 14, 2026.

Which boutiques actually clear B2B information and subscription-data deals?

JEGI LEONIS, Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips and Berkery Noyes, and the same three appear in marketing services, which is why the information and marketing benches share advisers while events has none. JEGI LEONIS carries the deepest dated record in the lane: Aite Group's sale to Pamlico Capital, July 21, 2021; Radius Global Market Research's investment from Star Mountain Capital, January 24, 2022; Hart Energy's sale of Rextag to Yellow Point Equity Partners, January 6, 2025; and Touchpoint Markets' sale to Arc, an EagleTree Capital portfolio company, July 8, 2025, all from the firm's own releases under the JEGI CLARITY name. Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips publishes 129 deals with no dates. Berkery Noyes, an investment bank "throughout the information industry," publishes 2025-26 deal cards, year only and side unstated, such as collectionHQ's acquisition by Valsoft.

The buyer side of this lane is the reason a specialist matters. Informa buys scale: Ascential, and TechTarget, where it contributed $350M of cash plus its Tech Digital Businesses for about 57% of a Nasdaq-listed vehicle rather than paying a cash control premium. RELX buys small: its 2025 results report five acquisitions for a total consideration of £270M, an average of £54M, against £1.5B of share buybacks in the same year and £2.25B planned for 2026 (RELX 2025 results). Informa's 2025 results also reference a non-cash impairment of Informa TechTarget, so the buyer that printed the 28x-to-11x arbitrage also wrote down its B2B-digital combination; use both facts or neither.

Am I too small for JEGI LEONIS or Berkery Noyes?

Probably not: Harte Hanks was a $38.4M equity-value sale with a boutique named in the filing, Greenbids $27.5M at closing with LUMA named, and every JEGI LEONIS credit above is a private lower-middle-market deal. What sets the floor is the retainer and the minimum fee, which no firm here publishes, so ask in the first meeting.

Who are the top M&A advisers for marketing services, agencies and adtech?

LUMA Partners, Progress Partners and Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips on filed or dated evidence, then Intrepid Investment Bankers, and the bench is smaller than every published list says because two of the practices those lists cite no longer exist. This is the only lane where a specialist boutique holds a dated, SEC-filed, role-specific credit, and it holds two: "Greenbids was advised by LUMA Partners," verbatim from Perion Network's 6-K of May 13, 2025, and "Citizens Capital Markets & Advisory is serving as lead financial advisor and Oaklins DeSilva + Phillips is serving as financial advisor to Harte Hanks," verbatim from Harte Hanks's 8-K exhibit, released August 14 and filed August 19, 2026. Progress Partners is the only firm in this guide that dates its own tombstones to the day, ten from April 2024 to September 8, 2026, with MiQ buying twice, though the tombstones do not state which side Progress represented.

The market these firms sell into is consolidating at the top and disposing in the middle. Omnicom and Interpublic completed their all-stock merger on November 26, 2025, creating a group with pro forma revenue in excess of $25B (Omnicom 8-K, November 26, 2025). WPP's 2026 interim results report revenue less pass-through costs down 4.7% like-for-like, its top 25 clients down 6.3%, and "over £200m" of expected disposal proceeds this year (WPP, 2026 interim results). In adtech, LUMA's Q2 2026 Market Report counted 102 digital media and marketing deals, down 16% year on year, with ad tech flat and martech down 20%, and Liftoff's June 2026 listing the first pure-play ad tech IPO since MNTN in May 2025 (LUMA Partners, Q2 2026); Berkery Noyes's media universe recorded value up 65% in the same half. The two count different universes: the megadeal layer inflated value while the adtech middle market contracted on count.

Is my marketing agency unsellable because of client concentration?

No, but concentration is why your price will arrive in three tranches rather than one. Perion's Greenbids purchase is the template on the SEC tape: $27.5M in cash at closing, a two-year cash earn-out of $22.5M, and a three-year employee retention of $15M in cash and equity, which LUMA's own site headlines as "$65M." Both figures are honestly sourced; the retention pool is compensation, not purchase price, and the guaranteed consideration at closing was 42.3% of the headline, our arithmetic. Call it the Headline-to-Closing Gap, a Peony-original frame: the same deal is a $65M sale or a $27.5M sale depending on where you stand, and for an agency with two clients at 40% of billings the buyer sets the earn-out clock to those renewal dates. "What did it sell for" is three questions, headline, basis and cash at closing, and a seller who does not fix all three early negotiates against a moving number.

Who advises the large-cap consumer media deals, and why does that bench never overlap?

Allen & Company, Evercore and J.P. Morgan on the sell side of Warner Bros. Discovery against two different bidders, Centerview leading the winning buyer, Qatalyst alone for Roku, Moelis alone for Netflix, and not one of those firms appears on a single B2B information, events or marketing tombstone in this guide. The large-cap tape does two things for a smaller seller: it sets the only published EBITDA multiple on a consumer media deal in the period, Paramount Skydance's 7.5x fully synergized 2026 EBITDA on $110B of enterprise value, and it shows how a contested process behaves: when Paramount Skydance topped Netflix in February 2026, the seller's three banks did not change, the winning buyer fielded six financial advisers, and the cash price rose from $27.75 to $31.00 a share, 11.7%.

Who are the 17 media M&A advisors on this bench, and how are they ranked?

By adviser-of-record evidence first and by relevance to an owner-seller at $10M-$150M of revenue second. Within the specialist bench, the unit is a dated credit that states which side the firm was on: an SEC filing outranks a party's release, which outranks the firm's own dated release, which outranks a day-dated tombstone naming both parties but no side, which outranks a year-only deal card, which outranks an undated logo. That is why JEGI LEONIS sits above Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, and Progress Partners above Berkery Noyes. Positions 7 through 16 are large-cap banks ranked as a block on filed credits, by mandate count and role, on deals from roughly $1.5B to $110B of enterprise value; below roughly $500M they are the bank across the table, not your hire. Position 17 is an adjacent digital-economy bank.

1. JEGI LEONIS (formerly JEGI CLARITY): the deepest dated record across information, events and marketing

JEGI LEONIS, "a pre-eminent M&A advisory firm for the global media, marketing, information and technology industries" in its own tagline, is the September 2025 combination of JEGI CLARITY and Leonis Partners. Nine dated, side-stated credits from its own releases, 2021 to 2025, are listed in the lane sections above; its current transactions page publishes no dates. Registration: "Leonis Securities, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leonis Principal, LLC (dba JEGI LEONIS)," SEC-registered and a FINRA member, with Leonis Principal Ltd authorised by the FCA in London. Verdict: the best-evidenced specialist in all three lower-middle-market lanes.

2. Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips: the boutique named in an SEC filing

Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips, New York, "investment bankers for technology, media and marketing companies," is named in Harte Hanks's August 14, 2026 release as financial advisor alongside lead adviser Citizens, the only specialist credit here that sits in a filing. Its 129 published deals carry no dates but recognisable names: VidCon to Informa, Quartz and The Inventory to Redbrick Technologies, Kotaku to Keleops AG, Hay House to Penguin Random House, Epicenter Experience to Stagwell. Registration: "Oaklins DeSilva & Phillips LLC manages its securities transactions through its sister organization, Oaklins DP LLC," a FINRA member. Its page's "100+ cross-border transactions annually" describes the Oaklins network, not this firm. Verdict: the first call for a digital-media, publishing or marketing-services seller.

3. LUMA Partners: the adtech credit in a filing, and the map everyone uses

LUMA Partners, "Investment Banking. Evolved.," is named in Perion's May 13, 2025 6-K: "Greenbids was advised by LUMA Partners." Its other published transactions, month-dated and side-unstated, include Scibids to DoubleVerify (August 2023, $125M), Place Exchange to Broadsign (November 2025) and Liftoff's June 2026 IPO; its scale claim is "more than $27 billion in client successes," a phrase to preserve as written. The LUMAscape is the sector's best-known research. Registration: "Securities transactions conducted through LUMA Securities LLC, a FINRA registered broker-dealer and member SIPC," in-house. Verdict: the first call for an adtech or martech seller; ask which side it took on each tombstone.

4. Progress Partners: the only firm that dates its tombstones to the day

Progress Partners, "a full service investment bank" with AdTech and MediaTech among seven verticals, publishes what no other firm here does: day-dated tombstones naming both parties, ten of them from April 2024 to September 8, 2026, with MiQ acquiring twice (Pathlabs, September 2024; Rocket Lab, April 2026) and TrueData to ID5 (November 2025). The tombstones do not state which side Progress represented. Registration: "Securities related transactions are offered through a registered representative of an independent broker/dealer, FNEX Capital, LLC, member of FINRA and SIPC," an umbrella platform with nine branch offices, so the disclosure attaches to a person, not the firm. Verdict: the best tombstone discipline in the sector; ask for the side and the retainer.

5. Berkery Noyes: the multiple every buyer will quote, and the banker who ran Emerald

Berkery Noyes, an information-industry bank since 1988, publishes the only free, dated, segment-level multiple series in this sector, and its Managing Director for Media, Trade Shows and Events, David Loechner, was CEO and President of Emerald Expositions and President of Nielsen Expositions. Its scale claim is "involved in more than 500 sell-side and buy-side M&A transactions" with affiliates; its homepage deal cards, year only, state no side. Verdict: hire it when the fight is over the multiple; it is an information bank with a one-banker events desk, not an events platform.

6. Intrepid Investment Bankers: a named head, two holding-company counterparties, bank-owned

Intrepid Investment Bankers, Los Angeles, a member of MUFG, runs a Media & Entertainment group under Managing Director Daniel Gossels with eight verticals including Marketing & Agency Services and B2B Media Tech; its undated, side-unstated tombstones include p-value Group to Publicis Groupe and Diff to WPP. Registered under its own name, one of only three firms in the registration table below that a reader can find by the name on the door. Verdict: the bank-owned option for an agency selling to a holding company; ask for dates.

7. Allen & Company: the franchise bank, on two filings

Allen & Company LLC, New York, advised Warner Bros. Discovery on both the Netflix and Paramount Skydance bids and is lead financial advisor to Fox on the $22B Roku purchase, sell side and buy side of the period's two largest US media deals within six months. Registration: Allen & Company LLC, FINRA-approved in 1964, recorded as a "Small" firm on the SEC's size classification; allenandcompany.net is an unrelated Lakeland, Florida wealth manager trading through LPL Financial. Verdict: the bank a board hires above $10B; no evidence below.

8. Goldman Sachs: the only bank in both the events and consumer lanes

Goldman Sachs was exclusive financial advisor to Emerald on Apollo's take-private ("lead financial advisor" in the March 13, 2026 8-K on the strategic review, "the exclusive financial advisor" in the May and July releases), joint financial adviser to Ascential on Informa's £1.2B offer, and an adviser to Fox on Roku. Verdict: the events lane's only sell-side adviser of record on a filed deal, at $1.5B and above.

9. Centerview Partners: the special-committee bank, and the only one whose fees are public

Centerview Partners is lead financial adviser, with RedBird Advisors, to Paramount Skydance on the pending Warner Bros. Discovery bid, and advised the Special Committees of Endeavor and Paramount Global on their take-privates; both fees are set out below. Verdict: the template for a controlled-company process; read the fee disclosure whether or not you can hire it.

10. Evercore: the bridge between consumer media and adtech

Evercore advised Warner Bros. Discovery on both bids and is the sole named financial adviser to LiveRamp on its pending $2.167B enterprise-value sale to Publicis, a consumer sell side and an adtech sell side in the same year. Verdict: the adviser for an adtech platform above $1B.

11. Morgan Stanley: Informa's bank, and the lender on Fox

Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc was sole financial adviser and corporate broker to Informa on Ascential, giving the Takeover Code cash confirmation while Morgan Stanley Bank provided the £1.25B offer facility; Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC advises Fox on Roku while Morgan Stanley Senior Funding provides the committed $12B bridge. Advice and financing from one house, twice. Verdict: the bank that knows what Informa pays; for a seller, the adviser across the table.

12. BofA Securities: joint on Ascential, sole for Publicis

BofA Securities was joint financial adviser and joint corporate broker to Ascential, is financial adviser to Publicis Groupe on LiveRamp, and is one of six banks on Paramount Skydance's side of the Warner Bros. Discovery bid. Verdict: three mandates across three lanes; the buyer's bank in two of them.

13. J.P. Morgan: three sell-side mandates, all shared

J.P. Morgan advised Warner Bros. Discovery on both bids and, as J.P. Morgan Securities plc, advised Hyve, Providence and Searchlight with LionTree on the pending sale to Hellman & Friedman, every role one of two or three names on the line. Verdict: ranked on count; no sole media mandate in any document I read.

14. LionTree: the self-described media bank, evidenced only by counterparties

LionTree, "the independent investment and merchant bank for creativity, community, and capital," is a sell-side adviser on Hyve per Providence Equity's June 2, 2026 release and one of six financial advisers to Paramount Skydance. Its site publishes no transaction list, deal count or registration line. Verdict: a media bank by declaration and two counterparties' documents.

15. Qatalyst Partners: the one sole-and-exclusive sell-side mandate at scale

Qatalyst Partners holds the cleanest sell-side line in the ledger, "Qatalyst Partners is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Roku," verbatim from Fox's June 15, 2026 8-K, on a $22B deal where the buyer fielded three banks and the seller one. Verdict: the sell-side reference above $10B; a single credit, and a pending one.

16. Moelis & Company: sole adviser on the bid that lost

Moelis & Company advised Netflix on its $27.75-a-share bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, "Moelis & Company LLC is acting as Netflix's financial advisor" in the words of Netflix's January 20, 2026 8-K, a bid Paramount Skydance topped 38 days later. Report it as advising Netflix on its bid, never on the sale. Verdict: a filed, sole buy-side credit whose transaction did not happen.

17. Arma Partners: adjacent, dual-regulated, and labelled as such

Arma Partners, "financial advisors to the Digital Economy," names Media & Internet and Data & Information among thirteen sectors, eleven of which are software, infrastructure and fintech, and its five most recent published deals are software or fintech; its scale claim, 366 deals and $224.3B since inception, 75% cross-border, is the most precise here. Verdict: ranked for the transatlantic structure and the data sector; no media credit in this pass.

How do I check whether my media M&A adviser is FINRA-registered, and under which name?

Search the broker-dealer's name, not the brand's, because in this sector almost everyone is registered and most under a different name from the one on the door. Of the ten brands in the table below, three are registered under the name on the door; across the 19 live advisory brands in this guide's ledger, bench and leave-off list that I checked in the SEC's firm database on September 15, 2026, six are and 13 are not, a 68% mismatch rate for this bench.

Five traps make the search worse than empty. "JEGI" returns JEGI LLC (CRD 134887), inactive; the live entity is Leonis Securities, approved in 2016, nine years before the merger. "DeSilva+Phillips" returns nothing under any of its five circulating spellings. "Petsky Prunier" and "Marlin & Associates" return terminated firms, dated in the leave-off section below. "Allen & Company" returns four entities, only one of them the active New York bank. Two names on the largest deals return no matching firm at all, RAN Advisory on Emerald and Hyve and M. Klein & Company on the Paramount side; that is an observation, not an accusation, since M&A advice that touches no securities requires no registration. The better questions are which legal entity signs the engagement letter, whether the broker-dealer is owned or rented, and whether your deal has a securities leg at all.

Who did we leave off, and why?

Every firm below is real; what is missing is a live practice or a media credit.

The practice no longer exists. Canaccord Genuity, credited on most lists as the home of the former Petsky Prunier media and marketing team, publishes eleven US sectors and not one is media, marketing or information; Petsky Prunier Securities, LLC's registration was terminated on December 5, 2019, the date Canaccord absorbed the business. Marlin & Associates' registration was terminated on November 7, 2021, its domain no longer resolves and it has no EDGAR footprint from 2024 to 2026.

No media practice. Cascadia Capital names seven verticals and none is media, marketing, adtech or information; a real bank in the wrong sector for this list.

Unevidenced from their own sites. The Raine Group's site blocks automated requests and its EDGAR footprint is its own Form 4 filings; a real media and sports bank with no adviser credit I could establish. Houlihan Lokey's media page returned no content, and its only role in this guide's ledger is the Endeavor fairness opinion in the fees section.

In the ledger, not the bench. RBC Capital Markets and PJT Partners (Apollo on Emerald), Citi, M. Klein & Company and RedBird Advisors (Paramount's side), Deutsche Numis (a UK corporate-broker role), Citizens (lead on Harte Hanks) and RAN Advisory (Emerald and Hyve; no registered match, no site, no second transaction I could verify): one credit is a deal, not a practice. Wells Fargo, BNP and HSBC arranged Netflix's debt, which is financing, not advice.

Buyers, not advisers. Informa, RELX, Axel Springer and Ziff Davis are acquirers, covered in the lane sections above; our media investors directory covers venture investors, a different list.

What are information, events, agency and adtech businesses selling for in 2026?

One publisher, Berkery Noyes, prints a free, dated, segment-level multiple; every other number worth citing is in a buyer's own document.

Will my business be priced on recurring revenue, on show economics, on EBITDA with an earn-out, or as a declining audience asset?

If the buyer's first two questions are renewal rate and net revenue retention, you are in the recurring-revenue lane and Informa's Intelligence disposal is the ceiling reference; if it asks what share of next year's show is rebooked, the events lane, anchored at Informa's multiple below; if its first structure has three tranches, the agency lane, on the Greenbids split; if it asks for sessions by source, the audience lane, and the question is what revenue survives. The four do not convert.

What are subscription and information businesses selling for?

Higher than media, and falling toward it. Berkery Noyes's 1st Half 2026 Finance Industry Trends report, whose Financial Technology & Information segment is fintech-weighted rather than a pure B2B-information read, puts the median EV/revenue at 2.6x, down from 4.4x in 2H 2025, on 243 transactions and $28.8B of value; deals above $160M of enterprise value ran 4.6x and $10M-$160M deals 2.2x. No EBITDA multiple is published for that segment. The buyer-side ceiling is Informa's 28x Intelligence disposal, sourced under events below. The pattern is buy the group, sell the verticals: a B2B information group is bought whole, demerged and sold in pieces, so a B2B information data room is often a carve-out room, with shared contributor contracts, ad-sales relationships and tech stacks separated on paper first.

What are events businesses selling for?

Around 11x post-synergy EBITDA where Informa is the buyer, and undisclosed almost everywhere else. Informa's Rule 2.7 announcement discloses the whole arbitrage: its three-year Reinvestment Programme sold the Informa Intelligence portfolio, £200M of revenue, for £2.5B at an average 28x EBITDA, and bought Winsight, Tarsus, HIMSS and Ascential, £600M of revenue, "at an average post-synergy enterprise value/EBITDA multiple of c. 11x," with Ascential alone at "a low double-digit multiple of enterprise value to Ascential's estimated EBITDA in 2025," a phrase to quote rather than convert (Informa Rule 2.7 announcement, July 24, 2024). Emerald's estimated closing enterprise value of approximately $1.5B against FY2025 revenue of $463.4M is about 3.2x revenue for Emerald alone, since no Questex value was published. The acquired-versus-organic arithmetic is in Informa's 2025 results: Informa Festivals revenue doubled, up 100.4% reported, while growing 7.7% underlying, the gap being Ascential landing in the division (Informa 2025 full-year results, March 12, 2026). The median operator is not compounding like that: UFI's 37th Global Exhibition Barometer, July 2026, found the share of US exhibition companies reporting operating profit growth above 10% was 25% for 2025 and the share expecting it for 2026 is zero (UFI, July 2026).

What do marketing agencies and adtech companies sell for?

Nobody publishes a current agency multiple, so the closest sourced read is Berkery Noyes's Media, Marketing & Online universe: median EV/revenue 1.7x and median EV/EBITDA 8.7x in 1H 2026, up from 1.3x and 6.1x, on 485 transactions and $196.1B of value and, over the 1H 2024 to 1H 2026 window, deals above $80M of enterprise value at 2.5x revenue and $10M-$80M deals at 1.7x, with financial sponsors at 19% of volume and 9% of value. That last pair is the honest frame for who buys: media is a strategic-buyer market, close to building products and the opposite of the sponsor-majority automotive aftermarket. SI Partners publishes a brochure, Ciesco's report I could not retrieve, and JEGI LEONIS's is gated. What is published is structure, and the Greenbids split above is the structure to negotiate against.

What do media M&A advisers charge?

A retainer plus a success fee, and not one media adviser publishes its rate: the sites of JEGI LEONIS, LUMA Partners, Berkery Noyes, Ciesco and SI Partners carry no fee page. What is filed sits at the top of the market. On Endeavor's take-private, Centerview was paid an aggregate $54M, $3M on engagement, $3M on its opinion and $48M contingent on closing, 88.9%, our arithmetic; on the same transaction, Kroll's fairness opinion for the selling funds' general partners was $1.25M and Houlihan Lokey's for the buying funds' general partners $900,000, with no portion of either contingent on anything (Endeavor DEFM14C, January 15, 2025). On Paramount Global, Centerview's transaction fee was estimated at $51M, 25% payable at signing and 75% at closing, with the retainer and a $2.5M opinion fee creditable against it (Paramount Global DEFM14C, February 13, 2025). The split is deliberate: the adviser is paid 89% on outcome and the firms paid to say whether the price is fair are paid 0% on outcome.

Do boutique M&A banks charge retainers, and how much?

Yes, and the amount is unpublished, so the conventions in our M&A advisor fees guide are the starting point, not the sector's norm: a monthly retainer credited against the success fee, and a success fee on either the modern double Lehman ladder in that guide or a negotiated flat percentage with a stated minimum. Settle three media-specific terms first: whether the percentage applies to headline consideration or to cash at closing, the Headline-to-Closing Gap above; whether an unpaid earn-out still earns a fee; and what else your banker is being paid by the buyer, since in this ledger the same house advised and lent on Fox and on Informa.

How do I sell a B2B media company, step by step?

In five steps that the dated deals in this guide time at 77 days from firm offer to close (Ascential) and about seven months from first inbound to close (Emerald); no firm publishes a sector benchmark. First, diagnose the lane with the routing test above: renewal rate, rebooking, three tranches or sessions by source. Second, build the evidence pack before the first call, the lane-specific files listed in the next section, with definitions that hold between versions. Third, run a targeted list of six to ten buyers with a second bidder held in reserve; the reserve bidder is what the adviser is for. Fourth, stage the room. Fifth, signing to close: Ascential ran 77 days from Rule 2.7 announcement to Scheme Effective; Harte Hanks projected 60 to 90 days; Emerald went from a December 2025 inbound inquiry to a May 2026 agreement and a July 14, 2026 close.

Which bankers have actually closed deals with Informa and RELX?

For Informa, three on the record: JEGI LEONIS on Delinian's sale of IMN (October 10, 2024), Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips on VidCon (undated, on its own deals page), and BofA Securities with Goldman Sachs on Ascential's sell side, with Morgan Stanley on Informa's own side. For RELX, none I could find: its 2025 results report five acquisitions for £270M in total and name no adviser, and no RELX deal with an adviser of record appears in any document read for this guide.

How do I keep a sale confidential when the bidders are my competitors, and where does Peony fit?

By deciding, document by document, who reads what and when, because in all four lanes the likeliest buyer can hurt you if the deal dies: the rival publisher that wants your subscriber cohorts, the organiser that wants your exhibitor roster, the holding company that already pitches your clients.

• Information and subscription: subscriber and renewal cohorts by segment and quarter; net revenue retention; eight quarters of sessions by source; and any GenAI content-licensing agreement with its term, exclusivity and contributor consents.
• Events: rebooking at close of show and repeat-exhibitor rate; exhibitor and sponsor concentration by flagship; venue and date contracts; and the deferred-revenue schedule by show.
• Agencies and adtech: every client contract with its termination clause and renewal date; platform dependence on one demand-side or supply-side partner; and the earn-out schedule itself.

The fix is staged access, run out of a room you control:

• A separate data room per bidder, with visitor groups walling a rival organiser or a competing holding company off inside one process.
• Staged disclosure: teaser and property-level summaries first; renewal cohorts, rebooking data or the earn-out base in the middle; advertiser-level pricing, subscriber lists, exhibitor rosters and client contracts last, after a bid you believe.
• Per-viewer watermarks on every rendered page, so a forwarded rate card traces to one reader. Data Room plan and up.
• NDA gates before the room opens: acknowledge-only NDA on Business and up, Advanced NDA with a countersigned PDF on Data Room and up; one-click revoke on Business and up.
• Page-level analytics showing which bidder spent forty minutes on the churn cohort file, the one preparing a retrade.
• Auto-indexing so carve-out schedules arrive complete on the first send; plus structured Q&A, a custom domain and the security layer.

Peony is not an M&A advisor and does not place deals; the firms above do that. We are the confidential room the process runs in: pick your advisor first, then stand up the room. Peony is used by 6,800+ customers on exactly this layer; the build is in our M&A data room playbook and how to write a CIM, with media and M&A solution pages. The Data Room plan is $52 per admin per month billed annually, the tier a sell-side process wants: dynamic watermarking, Advanced NDA, per-file permissions and unlimited rooms. Business is $30 per admin per month; Deal Team is $64 per admin per month billed annually with a four-admin minimum; a Free tier exists; every tier includes unlimited free viewers. Full detail on pricing.

So which media M&A adviser should you hire?

The one whose dated evidence sits in your lane, because the Four-Currency Media Market does not convert. An information or subscription-data seller: JEGI LEONIS on nine dated credits, Berkery Noyes when the multiple is the fight. An events owner has no specialist to hire and should say so in the first meeting: JEGI LEONIS for the dated events credits, Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips for the undated VidCon-to-Informa credit, Goldman Sachs only above $1B. An agency or adtech founder: LUMA Partners or Progress Partners for adtech, Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips or Intrepid for an agency selling to a holding company. A consumer media board is choosing from the filings. Then decide who reads what, and when: your best buyer is your competitor in all four.

Related resources

• Best M&A advisors, the cross-sector hub, and the technology, software, consumer products and automotive benches.
• Top media investors, M&A advisor fees, M&A advisor vs broker vs investment bank and quality of earnings.
• M&A data room, how to write a CIM and mergers and acquisitions examples.
• Pricing and the media, M&A, due diligence and private equity solution pages.

Frequently asked questions

My organic traffic is down 40% from AI Overviews — will buyers still pay for my B2B media business?

Yes, but for the revenue that does not arrive through a search box, and they will price the rest as a declining asset. People Inc.'s 10-Qs report Core Sessions down 6% in Q3 2025, 17% in Q1 2026 and 22% in Q2 2026, each attributed to Google AI Overviews, while Q2 2026 Digital revenue still rose 6% to $289.9M because non-session revenue grew. A buyer runs the Session Split on your revenue, capitalises the non-session part and discounts the rest on your own decline curve. For a $25M-revenue B2B publisher with 40% of sessions gone, what you can evidence matters more than the decline: direct and email share of traffic, renewal rates on paid products, and the quarter the decline flattened. Put eight quarters of sessions by source in the data room before the first call.

Is 2026 a bad time to sell a B2B media business because of AI search?

Bad for an ad-supported audience asset, not for an information, events or data business, and the question nobody asks is whether your archive is an AI licence. Audience revenue is depreciating on a curve the sellers' own filings document, so waiting costs, but Berkery Noyes's 1H 2026 Media, Marketing & Online report recorded deal value up 65% and the median EV/EBITDA up from 6.1x to 8.7x, so buyers are paying for the assets that survive. The differentiator is content licensing: John Wiley & Sons told the SEC in September 2024 it had executed a second GenAI content rights project with a large tech company and attributed Learning-segment growth to demand for its content in training models. If your archive is licensable, the AI story is a revenue line, and the licence terms, exclusivity and contributor consents belong in the room.

Who are the best M&A advisers for B2B media and information services companies?

JEGI LEONIS, Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips and Berkery Noyes on the evidence, and the answer changes by lane because the benches barely overlap. For B2B information and subscription data, JEGI LEONIS carries nine dated adviser-of-record credits; Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips is named in a Harte Hanks SEC filing of August 2026 and publishes VidCon's sale to Informa as an undated client credit; Berkery Noyes publishes the sector's only free multiple series. For events there is no specialist: JEGI LEONIS holds the dated events credits, and Goldman Sachs was Emerald's exclusive adviser on the Apollo take-private at an estimated $1.5B enterprise value. For marketing services and adtech, LUMA Partners, Progress Partners and Intrepid Investment Bankers. Large-cap consumer media is a different list: Allen & Company, Evercore, Centerview Partners, Qatalyst Partners, LionTree and Moelis & Company. I run Peony, the data room 6,800+ customers use; we are not an adviser.

JEGI LEONIS (formerly JEGI CLARITY) vs Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips vs Berkery Noyes — which should I hire to sell my media business?

JEGI LEONIS for a B2B information or events business, Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips for a consumer, digital-media or marketing-services asset, and Berkery Noyes when the fight is over the multiple, because the evidence sorts them. JEGI LEONIS publishes nine dated, side-stated credits from 2021 to 2025 across subscription research, events and B2B information, and is the only one of the three regulated on both sides of the Atlantic, through Leonis Securities, LLC and an FCA-authorised UK entity. Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips is the only one named in an SEC filing, as financial adviser to Harte Hanks alongside lead adviser Citizens on August 14, 2026. Berkery Noyes's deal cards state no side and no month, but its 1H 2026 trend report is the multiple every buyer will quote at you. For a $40M-revenue trade-media group with a flagship show, JEGI LEONIS; for a $15M digital publisher, Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips.

JEGI CLARITY vs Leonis Partners — how do their track records compare, and are they still two firms?

They are one firm, and any comparison you read is out of date. JEGI CLARITY and Leonis Partners announced a combination on March 10, 2025 and closed the merger and rebranded as JEGI LEONIS on September 8, 2025. The surviving legal entity is Leonis: the firm's own legal page says Leonis Securities, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leonis Principal, LLC, doing business as JEGI LEONIS, while the old JEGI LLC broker-dealer registration is inactive. The surviving brand is JEGI. Its published nearly 40 years and more than 900 transactions is a combined history, and every dated credit I could recover, nine from 2021 to July 2025, was published under the JEGI CLARITY name. Judge the combined firm on those nine, not on a challenger-versus-incumbent story that ended a year ago.

Boutique media M&A bank or a generalist middle-market bank for an $80M media business?

The boutique, unless you need committed financing or a special-committee process, and the generalist AI engines name when asked, Houlihan Lokey, has no media adviser-of-record credit in any filing I read; its only role in this guide's ledger is a $900,000 fairness opinion on Endeavor, none of it contingent on closing. What sector knowledge buys at $80M is the buyer list and the diligence: a boutique that has sold to Informa knows what Informa pays, about 11x post-synergy EBITDA for events by its own Rule 2.7 disclosure. Where the generalist wins is scale: the ledger's banks fielded six financial advisers on the buyer's side of a $110B media merger. If your enterprise value is under about $500M, those banks are the ones across the table from you, not your hire.

What EBITDA multiple do B2B media, events and data businesses sell for in 2026?

One published median, 8.7x, and it is not your multiple. Berkery Noyes's 1st Half 2026 Media, Marketing & Online report puts the median EV/EBITDA at 8.7x, up from 6.1x in 2H 2025, with median EV/revenue at 1.7x; its size split is the number that matters to you: deals above $80M of enterprise value cleared at 2.5x revenue and deals of $10M-$80M at 1.7x across 1H 2024 to 1H 2026. The same publisher's fintech-weighted Financial Technology & Information segment ran 2.6x revenue, down from 4.4x, with no EBITDA multiple published. The two anchors from buyers' own documents are Informa's 28x for its Intelligence divestment against about 11x for its events purchases, and Paramount Skydance's 7.5x fully synergized 2026 EBITDA for Warner Bros. Discovery. Only 27% of tracked deals disclose terms at all, so your adviser's private comps are the real benchmark.

Are events and trade show businesses still getting good multiples in 2026?

The large diversified organisers are, the median operator is bracing, and the gap between them is the deal flow. Informa's B2B Live Events division grew underlying revenue 9.5% in 2025 and Informa is guiding that division to 7%-plus for 2026, against 6%± for the group. Against that, UFI's July 2026 Global Exhibition Barometer found that 25% of US exhibition companies reported operating profit growth above 10% for 2025 and none expects it for 2026. Buyers underwrite show economics on rebooking at close of show, repeat-exhibitor rate, venue and date control, and flagship concentration; for a $25M organiser with one flagship at 60% of revenue, that concentration question comes before the multiple. The closing dispute is deferred revenue: a show sold in October and held in March is cash you have collected for a cost the buyer will bear. Informa's own basis, about 11x post-synergy EBITDA for its events purchases, is the published anchor.

Should I sell to Informa, RELX or Ziff Davis, or to a private equity sponsor?

To the buyer whose filings show it buying assets like yours, and the filings say Informa buys scale, RELX buys small, and sponsors buy below the megadeal line. Informa completed Ascential at about £1.2B equity value in October 2024 and TechTarget in December 2024. RELX completed five acquisitions for £270M in total in 2025, an average of £54M, and spent £1.5B on buybacks the same year; a £300M information business is the wrong size for it. Ziff Davis is a real buyer, but I found no filing-sourced deal in the 2024-2026 window. Sponsors were 19% of volume and 9% of value in Berkery Noyes's 1H 2026 media universe, and at scale they buy control blocks: Apollo took Emerald private at $5.03 a share with Onex's 90%-plus vote signed by written consent the same day.

A strategic has already made an unsolicited offer — should I still run a process?

Usually yes, because the first number is not the number, and Informa's own takeover document proves it. Its Rule 2.7 announcement for Ascential states that Informa's interest was unsolicited, that the board concluded the initial proposals did not reflect an appropriate valuation, and that the price reached 568 pence only after further approaches; the recommended offer carried a 53% premium. An inbound approach also creates an asymmetry: the strategic learns your renewal cohorts and exhibitor roster and you learn nothing about its pipeline. The tells of an offer priced to an internal target are no diligence list, a price stated before anyone has seen your traffic-source mix, and a short exclusivity ask.

How do earn-outs work in marketing agency acquisitions?

A share of the price is paid later against a measured target, and the terms around the measurement decide whether you see it. The Greenbids structure in Perion's May 2025 SEC filing is the template: $27.5M at closing, $22.5M over two years against performance, and $15M over three years as employee retention paid in cash and equity, which is compensation, not price. Decide four things before you sign: the base, revenue or EBITDA or client retention; the period, two years being the Greenbids term; who controls pricing, hiring and client allocation after close, written as operating covenants; and what happens if the buyer changes strategy or terminates you, which needs acceleration language. For a $15M agency with two clients at 40% of billings, expect the buyer to set the earn-out clock to those two renewal dates. To avoid a three-year bind, trade a lower cap for a shorter period and a revenue base you can influence from outside the building, and put the earn-out schedule and every client contract in the data room.

How long does it take to sell an information services company, and how do I run a competitive process with no corp dev team?

No firm publishes a sector timeline, so use the dated ones: Informa's Ascential offer went from Rule 2.7 announcement to Scheme Effective in 77 days, our arithmetic; Emerald ran from a December 2025 inbound inquiry to a signed agreement in May 2026 and closing on July 14, 2026; Harte Hanks's August 2026 agreement projected 60 to 90 days to close. Those are one deal each, not a benchmark. What stretches a process is what you cannot produce: audited subscription revenue recognition, deferred event revenue schedules, and traffic and renewal reporting that changes definition between versions; without a CFO, the founder owns that personally. For a short strategic list, a targeted process of six to ten buyers with a second bidder held in reserve beats a broad auction; the adviser's job is the reserve bidder.

What documents do I need in a data room to sell a media business, when the likely bidders are my direct competitors?

The lane-specific evidence buyers underwrite, staged so a rival that walks away leaves with nothing it can use. For a $30M-revenue B2B media group running four bidders, two of them competitors: subscriber and renewal cohorts by segment and quarter; eight quarters of sessions by source, with the AI-search decline shown; advertiser and exhibitor concentration; deferred-revenue schedules by show; every agency client contract with its termination terms; and any AI content-licensing agreement, with contributor consents. Then the room: a separate Peony data room per bidder so no party sees another's tranche or Q&A; staged disclosure that holds advertiser-level pricing, subscriber lists and exhibitor rosters behind a later gate until a bid is real; Advanced NDA gating with a countersigned PDF; per-viewer dynamic watermarks so a leaked rate card traces to the reader; and page-level analytics showing which bidder read the churn cohort file. The Data Room plan at $52 per admin per month billed annually is the tier this needs, with unlimited free viewers; Business at $30 covers the teaser stage; a Free tier exists. Peony serves 6,800+ customers and is not an adviser.

Lehman formula or modified Lehman — what do media M&A advisers actually charge?

None of them publishes a rate, so the formula is your negotiating start, not the sector's norm. The classic Lehman scale steps down through 5-4-3-2-1% by value tranche; the modern double Lehman in our M&A advisor fees guide runs roughly 10% of the first $1M, 8% of the second, 6% of the third, 4% of the fourth and 2% thereafter, or a negotiated flat percentage with a stated minimum. The only media fees on the public record are at the top: Centerview's $54M on Endeavor, 88.9% contingent on closing, and its $51M transaction fee on Paramount Global, 25% at signing and 75% at closing, with the retainer and opinion fees creditable against it. Negotiate the retainer credit, the minimum, the tail period and exclusivity length, and specify whether the percentage applies to headline consideration or to cash at closing, because on a Greenbids-shaped deal those differ by more than half.

Is a 2% success fee worth it versus selling direct to a strategic I already know?

Usually, because the fee buys the second bidder and the second bidder is where the price moves. Informa's own Rule 2.7 for Ascential states its initial unsolicited proposals were rejected as not reflecting an appropriate valuation and the price reached 568 pence only after further approaches, a 53% premium. On a $50M media sale a 2% fee is $1M; one extra turn of EBITDA on $5M of EBITDA is $5M. For a $15M agency with one holding company already at the table, the adviser also negotiates the earn-out base, the operating covenants and the escrow, the terms that decide whether the deferred 58% of a Greenbids-shaped deal ever arrives. The honest case for going direct exists: one obvious strategic, a clean audited book, counsel and a transaction accountant in place, and no earn-out. If you take it, get a walk-away price in writing before diligence opens.

Sources

• Warner Bros. Discovery bids: Netflix 8-K Exhibit 99.1, January 20, 2026; Paramount Skydance 8-K Exhibit 99.1, filed March 2, 2026, release dated February 27. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000119312526015951/d37713dex991.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2041610/000110465926021911/tm2533570d75_ex99-1.htm
• Fox Corporation 8-K Exhibit 99.1, June 15, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1754301/000119312526270285/d151410dex991.htm
• LiveRamp 8-K Exhibit 99.2, May 18, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/733269/000110465926062908/tm2614904d1_ex99-2.htm
• Emerald Holding 8-K Exhibits 99.1, March 13, May 11 and July 14, 2026; Form 15, July 24, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579214/000119312526105002/eex-ex99_1.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579214/000119312526215652/d22741dex991.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579214/000119312526303283/d101061dex991.htm
• Harte Hanks 8-K Exhibit 99.1, release dated August 14, 2026, filed August 19, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/45919/000004591926000009/ex99120260814prtransaction.htm
• Perion Network 6-K Exhibit 99.1, May 13, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1338940/000117891325001732/exhibit_99-1.htm
• Fee disclosures: Endeavor Group Holdings DEFM14C, January 15, 2025; Paramount Global DEFM14C, February 13, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1766363/000119312525007030/d872751ddefm14c.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/813828/000119312525026059/d813356ddefm14c.htm
• People Inc. (formerly IAC) 10-Qs, November 3, 2025, May 4, 2026 and August 3, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1800227/000162828025048244/iaci-20250930.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1800227/000162828026029798/iaci-20260331.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1800227/000162828026051881/ppli-20260630.htm
• John Wiley & Sons 8-K Exhibit 99.1, September 5, 2024. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/107140/000010714024000186/wly-2025731xex991.htm
• No-adviser-named releases: TechTarget 8-K Exhibit 99.1, December 3, 2024; Omnicom 8-K Exhibit 99.1, November 26, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2018064/000119312524269931/d913820dex991.htm; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/29989/000119312525300788/d24786dex991.htm
• Informa PLC: Rule 2.7 announcement (July 24, 2024), Scheme Effective announcement (October 9, 2024), 2025 full-year results (March 12, 2026). https://www.informa.com/globalassets/documents/investor-relations/2024/ascential-offer-documents/announcements/rule-2.7-announcement.pdf; https://www.informa.com/media/press-releases-news/latest-news/informa-2025-full-year-results/
• Providence Equity Partners releases (June 8, 2023; June 2, 2026), the source for the Hyve adviser roster; hyve.group news index. https://www.provequity.com/news/hyve-be-acquired-hellman-friedman-accelerate-next-phase-growth
• RELX 2025 results; WPP 2026 interim results; Axel Springer releases on its corporate structure (April 2025) and Telegraph Media Group (June 30, 2026). https://www.relx.com/media/press-releases/year-2026/relx-2025-results; https://www.wpp.com/en/news/2026-interim-results
• Berkery Noyes, 1st Half 2026 Media, Marketing & Online and Finance Industry Trends; LUMA Partners, Q2 2026 Market Report; UFI Global Exhibition Barometer, 37th edition (July 2026); Google AI Overviews posts (May 14 and October 28, 2024); Pew Research Center (July 22, 2025). https://berkerynoyes.com/1st-half-2026-media-marketing-online-industry-trends/; https://lumapartners.com/presentations/q2-2026-market-report/; https://www.ufi.org/app/uploads/2026/07/UFI-Barometer-37th-Edition.pdf
• Firm sites, SEC filings and the SEC adviser-info firm database (CRD numbers), all read September 15, 2026; JEGI CLARITY releases via PR Newswire and citybiz, 2021-25; Publishers Weekly (Hay House, December 2023).

About the author: Sean Yu is the co-founder of Peony, the data room platform used by 6,800+ customers across M&A, fundraising, and private-deal workflows. He works on the access-control and analytics layer that decides who is allowed to read a confidential document. Peony is not an M&A advisor; it is the confidential room a deal process runs in. Contact: hello@peony.ink.