Second Round Bids for RBI Due This Week

The second round of bids for Reed Business
Information could be due as early as Monday, with BusinessWeek parent
McGraw-Hill among the interested parties.

UBS, the bank that's organizing the sale, has invited more
than 10 groups including McGraw-Hill and private equity firm Bain Capital to submit
their second round offers, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The value of the bids is said to range between $1.87 billion and $2.33 billion.

Final bids likely will be due in late October, the report
said.

In releasing its first half financial results, London-based Reed
Elsevier last month said it had received a "strong level
of interest from buyers" and that it expects its divestiture of RBI to be
complete sometime within the second half of the year. RBI's first half adjusted
operating profit was about $122.7 million, up 7 percent from $108.9 million
during the same period in 2007. Revenue was $958.6 million, up 3 percent from
$881.3 million during the same period last year.

Reed Elsevier announced in February that it was putting RBI,
its b-to-b publishing arm, on the block. It was not immediately clear if
McGraw-Hill is interested in purchasing individual titles or RBI as a whole. A
McGraw-Hill spokesperson declined to comment
last month when it was reported that the construction
and aviation magazine publisher was one of the prospective bidders.

To help assure that RBI sells in one piece, Reed put
together a group of banks to lend nearly $1.5 billion to the eventual buyer.
RBI publishes a number of trade magazines, including Variety and Publishers
Weekly.

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