Sep

25

Kirkland, A&O, Others Lead on Legal, Business Media Deals

25-09-2011

Tagged Under : Business, Legal Business

In a pair of recently announced transactions totaling nearly $1 billion and involving two of the leading companies in the legal and business information sector, Thomson Reuters is selling a business unit and Reed Elsevier is buying one.

Reed Elsevier, owner of the LexisNexis legal research service, announced Monday that it will acquire Skokie, Ilinois–based legal and financial data provider Accuity Holdings from private equity firm Investcorp for about $533 million in cash.

Reed Elsevier intends to merge Accuity into its Bankers Almanac and LexisNexis Risk Solutions divisions, according to the Financial Times. Outside legal advisers for Bahrain-based Investcorp, whose general counsel is Stephanie Bess, were not immediately available.

Meanhwhile, Thomson Reuters, which owns the Westlaw legal research service, confirmed Friday that it has sold its trade and risk management software business to Vista Equity Partners for an undisclosed sum. Some media reports put the value of the deal at around $500 million.

The deals by Thomson Reuters and Reed Elsevier follow a late August transaction that saw rival Bloomberg LP acquire The Bureau of National Affairs, a privately owned provider of legal and business information to clients in government, business, and academia, for $990 million.Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom advised on that deal, according to our previous reports.

In a separate foray into the legal news sector,Bloomberg Law announced on Monday that it had reached an exclusive sponsorship agreement with SCOTUSblog, the Web site dedicated to coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court. Started by appellate litigator Tom Goldstein in 2002, SCOTUSblog officially relaunched itself Monday under the Bloomberg banner, according to sibling publication The National Law Journal.

Due to client conflicts,Goldstein left Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld earlier this year to return to his former firm .Akin Gump was SCOTUSblogs previous sponsor.

The additional resources provided by Bloomberg will allow SCOTUSblog, already a must-read for Supreme Court watchers, to “dramatically expand” its offerings, Goldstein told The NLJs Tony Mauro.

Goldsteins site plans to expand its offerings to include “community” discussion boards about key cases before the high court and a team of new contributors led by former Wall Street Journal correspondent and current law professor Stephen Wermiel, according to The NLJ.

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