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 [1].
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 [1]" 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 [1]
last month when it was reported [1] 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.