Informa pulls dividend, seeks £1bn in cash raising

Exhibitions group Informa pulled its its dividend and turned to investors for about £1bn in cash to help weather the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The FTSE 100 company said that, since the end of January in mainland China, the scale and reach of the pandemic had extended beyond initial predictions, significantly impacting its events-related businesses in particular.

Informa said it would offer institutional investors 250m shares, or just under 20% of its stock, at an unspecified price. The company had also applied to the Bank of England to use its Covid-19 emergency commercial paper programme.

Discretionary spending was axed and salary reviews postponed for staff across the group as Informa moved to cut debt from to about £1.4bn from £2.36bn.

Chief executive Lord Carter and his chief financial officer both agreed to take 33% salary cuts while senior managers and non-executive board members would have their pay reduced by a quarter.

Informa also announced the extension of its postponement programme, with at least £460m of revenue rescheduled to the third and fourth quarters, and less than 10% of events revenue cancelled to date. Exhibitions account for 65% of revenue and the remainder comes from subscriptions to its mainly digital publication and business information services.

At 0902 BST, shares in Informa were up 1.15% at 421.6p.