PEI was formed in late 2001 in a buyout by a team of managers working at a major listed financial media group.
The plan was to provide substantive coverage of private equity, already by then becoming one of the key global alternative asset classes for investors. We wanted to focus on the relationship between institutional capital and the fund managers tasked with investing this money. Then, as now, we saw incisive coverage of this relationship as being a defining feature of what we do. Since then we have built a portfolio of publication brands, each focused on one of the four alternative asset classes we now cover, and around which we cluster a wide range of products and services. This timeline gives you more detail of what we have done when.
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2001
2001
PEI was formed in London in November 2001 when a team of managers bought out a group of assets from financial media group Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC. These assets centred on the website PrivateEquityOnline.com. A month later and we had launched our first print magazine to sit alongside the site: Private Equity International.
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2002
2002
Our first full year of trading saw us focus on growing subscribers to our magazine and website. Increasingly sophisticated digital marketing helped to generate rapid growth. An early addition to the team was our now Head of Advertising, who started quickly to build an extensive book of advertisers. We also published our first specialist book.
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2003
2003
From the outset we wanted to be able to connect effectively with the key markets for our asset classes, so the opening of our New York office in January was an obvious as well as important step. This office was staffed from the outset by a range of professionals, including journalists, conference managers and sales people: a full-service team talking directly with this key market. We also produced our first conference, for private equity CFOs and COOs, in London later in the year.
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2004
2004
Our increasingly close relationship with the global private equity industry meant that we launched a second, more specialized, publication for operational professionals at fund management firms in June. Private Equity Manager, led by our New York team with support from their London-based colleagues, quickly established itself as the key title for COOs, CFOs and CLOs at private equity firms. And our conference business was gaining momentum, hosting four events in London and New York this year.
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2005
2005
We moved into our second key alternative asset class in April with the launch of Private Equity Real Estate magazine. As with private equity, we created a sizeable community of readers online via a daily news website and the addition of a monthly print publication provided an extra dimension for both subscribers and advertisers. Besides developing a suite of conferences to sit beneath this brand, we also started to publish books focused on real estate and began to build a database of investors in private real estate funds.
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2006
2006
With both our private equity and real estate publications growing fast - both in terms of subscription and advertising revenues - and significant growth too in our conference portfolio [we were hosting 12 events in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America] we now began to build out our operational capabilities. Dedicated marketing and finance professionals joined the team, and our product portfolio began to be owned by more clearly delineated groups within the company: publishing, conferences and specialist publications. Our head count reached 50.
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2007
2007
Although we already were connecting with the real estate and private equity communities across Asia, it was clear that there was an opportunity to further our global but local principle by opening an office in the region. Initially based in Singapore, we established another multi-faceted office in order to grow our editorial coverage, our event portfolio and our customer base in the region. Our ownership also changed this year when we undertook a secondary MBO enabling our original investors to exit and for the company to become wholly owned by its management.
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2008
2008
Despite the turmoil in the global financial markets we were continuing to grow our roster of conferences – hosting 19 events that year – as well as launching a professional development business within this division. 2008 also saw PEI move into online databases for the first time with the launch of private equity and real estate data products. The management team also gained further structure with the appointment of a Group Managing Director and the confirmation of a group of global divisional heads across the business.
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2009
2009
The year began with the announcement that we had been awarded the Queens Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category - the UK’s most prestigious awards for business performance. We also moved into a third alternative asset class – infrastructure – with the launch of Infrastructure Investor magazine and website. This was a community that we already knew through our annual infrastructure event held in Berlin. The publication quickly established itself as the leading source for news and analysis of the global infrastructure investment market.
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2010
2010
This year saw us invest in the development of our core brands. A specialist branding agency helped bring order to the design and hierarchy of the products within each asset class after conducting wide-ranging customer research. We began to invest extensively in our Customer Relationship Management [CRM] system and data research. 2010 was also the 2,500th anniversary of the original running of the marathon, and we co-lead an ambitious fund-raising effort that helped to raise €2,500,000 for UNICEF and other charities working with children across the world.
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2011
2011
We celebrated our tenth anniversary, having grown from five people in a small office near St Paul’s Cathedral in London to over one hundred people in three regional offices. November also saw us publish the 100th edition of Private Equity International magazine which we marked with a 120-page publication involving many of the industry’s leading figures and which looked back at a decade of private equity. We also strengthened our Asian business with the hiring of a Managing Director for Asia.
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2012
2012
We moved our Asian headquarters to Hong Kong from Singapore and located our growing team in new offices there. As the US economy began to strengthen we also saw great opportunities in North America for PEI across all of our asset classes. In September we reinforced our New York team with the hiring of a Managing Director for the Americas tasked with leading further investment and growth in the region.
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2013
2013
Our third and largest office upsizing took place when the 70-strong London team relocated to new offices at 140, London Wall. Our 30-strong New York office had also moved to Mid-town [E46th] a month prior. Given the ongoing upheavals in many economies, it was notable too that we had record-breaking attendances in three of our key conferences: one in New York, one in Hong Kong and one in Berlin. In March we began covering our fourth alternative asset class when we launched Private Debt Investor magazine and website. We also completed a total upgrade of our digital platform.
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2014
2014
In early 2014, the company made its first acquisition, adding Real Estate Capital (REC) to its portfolio of publishing brands in order to broaden and deepen our coverage of the global real estate markets further. Delivering deep insight for the real estate financing and advisory communities, REC was given a daily news website and hosted a standout inaugural conference in London. We also launched a number of new digital-only publications focused on emerging segments within the alternative asset classes such as secondaries and agriculture, enabling us to extend our reach into these growing communities of investors, funds and advisors.
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2015
2015
Passing yet another milestone in its evolution, in September 2015 PEI Media Group secured financial backing from LDC, the UK private equity arm of Lloyds Bank. LDC’s purchase of a significant minority stake in the company came at a time when our publishing business had grown to 10 stand-alone titles, alongside a global events portfolio now comprising circa 50 industry conferences, networking events and investor council seminars. We finished the year with strong revenue and EBITDA growth, and poised for further expansion of our platforms for the benefit of the alternative investment markets we service.
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2016
2016
Once again plenty of energetic heavy lifting aimed at developing our operational capabilities. For example: we built out our finance team under a newly appointed CFO, and added a Chief Technology and Information Officer to spearhead our growth agenda on the digital side. In Conferences, we drove a root-and-branch transformation strategy to optimise our approach to events management and delivery. On the publishing side, the focus was on investing strategically to strengthen our flagship titles in private equity, real estate, infrastructure and private credit, whilst also enabling the more recent arrivals in the portfolio to increase brand recognition and market share. The business finished its first full year under private equity ownership robustly ahead of plan.
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2017
2017
This was a year typified first and foremost by digital enhancement at PEI. It brought rapid advances to the ambitious technology investment programme started in 2016, which resulted in our publishing platform migrating from its legacy CMS onto WordPress, as well as the foundations being laid for a new CRM, subscriptions management and customer data platform. Commercially PEI also moved forward, with Advertising & Sponsorship, Subscription Sales and Conferences all posting record-breaking revenue growth. In Hong Kong, our Asia team celebrated its relocation to larger premises on Central's On Hing Terrace. .