LLOYD'S List owner Informa is losing its chief executive David Gilbertson to the lure of private equity riches.

He has been poached to become executive chairman of Emap's business-to-business arm, now in the hands of Apax and Guardian Media Group.

The exit is a huge blow to Informa, pieced together over a decade into a £1.4 billion venture by the double act of Gilbertson and Peter Rigby, the group's chairman.

It also underlines the fact that Apax has put on ice plans to combine Emap with Incisive Media, the other business publisher it owns.

To fill the gap, Rigby will this week be confirmed as Informa's chief executive, with Sport England boss Derek Mapp, the senior independent director, appointed chairman.

At Emap, whose assets include Construction News and the Cannes Lions advertising festival, Gilbertson's appointment is likely to spell bad news for current boss, Derek Carter.

After leading the £1.2bn purchase of Emap before Christmas, Apax has found it is unable to squeeze costs by combining the business with Incisive.

Lenders are unwilling to refinance cheaper debt put in place before the credit crunch for Incisive's purchase of American Lawyer magazine.

There are also suggestions that GMG, which planned to take a 20-25% stake in the combined Emap-Incisive, has been unable to agree with Apax on a valuation for Incisive, whose chief executive is Tim Weller.

GMG boss Carolyn McCall was keen to invest in the business to diversify away from consumer advertising, the mainstay of The Guardian and Observer newspapers.

Apax is expected to become involved in the £ 1 billion auction of Reed Elsevier's business publishing arm - the latest remodelling of the sector. Sale details are due to be circulated by adviser UBS in mid-April. If it wins, Apax could conceivably combine Reed Business, which owns showbiz trade title Variety and Estates Gazette, with either Emap or Incisive.

Informa, however, has already ruled itself out of the Reed sale.

Rigby and Gilbertson teamed up in 1998 when Rigby's conference group IBC combined with Gilbertson's LLP. Gilbertson was part of the management team that bought it out from the Lloyd's of London insurance market three years earlier.

They went on to merge Informa with academic journals publisher Taylor & Francis in 2004, before adding Tory peer Lord Laidlaw's conference and training business IIR for £768m 18 months later and then market researcher Datamonitor for £502m last year.

Informa shares have halved since last May, despite interim operating profits rising 24% to £74.8m. Investors were spooked last July when finance director Anthony Foye announced he was stepping down.

The company's resilience comes from a focus on hosting industry gatherings for niche trades such as biofuels.

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