Reed Elsevier Accepts Re-Bids for RBI

London-based Reed Elsevier is said to have allowed first round bidders for its trade magazine publishing arm, Reed Business Information, to re-submit their bids last week.

The re-submission, which wasn't officially the second round, was permitted because certain bidders "felt they were not provided with enough information" on RBI during the first round, a Reuters news report said.

It was not immediately clear what that information was, nor which group re-submitted bids. A Reed Elsevier spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

The new bids came in "slightly lower" than in the first round, the report said.

According to DeSilva + Phillips managing partner Reed Phillips, allowing re-submitted bids is a bit "unusal," but the move enabled the bidders to put together "a more precise expression" of their interest.

Last week, German publishing group Gruner + Jahr, which made a dramatic exit from the U.S. magazine market in 2005, confirmed that it had entered the second-round bidding war for RBI. UBS, the bank that's organizing the RBI sale, is said to have invited more than 10 groups, including McGraw-Hill and private equity firm Bain Capital, to submit their second round offers.

In releasing its first half financial results, Reed Elsevier last month said it expects the RBI divestiture to be complete sometime within the second half of the year. The value of the original first-round bids was said to have ranged between $1.87 billion and $2.33 billion.

RBI publishes a number of trade magazines including Variety and Publishers Weekly, Reed Elsevier announced in February that it was putting RBI on the block.

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