WHEN is a trade publisher not a trade pub-lisher? When it is a provider of
“marketing solutions”, apparently. Oh please.
David Levin, boss of United Business Media (UBM), smiles at my consternation.
His company reported impressive results on Friday, leading some to suggest
that UBM — publisher of Pulse, Building Design and Chemist &
Druggist magazines, among others — is now blazing a trail in showing how
old-style media can find new profits away from the printed page.
I don’t buy it.
“But I think you have described something terribly important,” says softly
spoken Levin, who loves the challenge of a good argument.
“The creation of a different form of revenue here is the biggest thing we have
achieved. What was overwhelmingly a display print advertising business model
is now an integrated company that makes the majority of its profits from
events and exhibitions, with very predictable revenue streams, 60%-80%
booked a year in advance.”
But what’s clever about that? Magazine companies have run exhibition arms for
decades. That, surely, is not the future of media.
“But other people do it differently,” he explains. “We integrate these
businesses, and we’ve bought a string of events businesses and put online
packaging round that.” All of which, he says, facilitates what must be the
ultimate aim of business-to-busi-ness media: “bringing buyer and seller
together” as a provider of “marketing solutions”.
What about the reader? “It’s a three-way dialogue,” he says, without flinching.
Levin, 45, has an answer for everything, one of the reasons he is the
analysts’ darling right now. In the two years since he took the top slot at
UBM — formerly Lord Hollick’s acquisition vehicle — he has turned it from a
hotchpotch of TV and print interests into a focused business-to-business
publisher, regularly cited as one of the most impressive operators in the
quoted media sector.
It leaves other trade publishers scratching their heads. Is Levin really doing
anything different, or is he just getting better PR?
A bit of both, probably. Friday’s results — continuing revenue up 16.6% to
£739.1m, continuing operating profit up 17.6% to £149m — show UBM is now
squeezing four-fifths of its profit from nonprint activities. No wonder
Levin thinks he is winning the argument.
And when you meet him, he is a surprise. Tall, brainy, introspective and
skeletally thin, Levin combines an assured gift for persuasion with an
eclectic CV and a richly diverse background. Born the younger son of South
African liberal émigrés of Lithuanian Jewish stock, he was brought up in
west London after his journalist father fled Ian Smith’s Rhodesia in the
1960s.
And before university, Levin spent a year in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
Since then he has worked at consultant Bain, venture capitalist Apax,
publisher Euromoney, computer firm Psion, software house Sym-bian, and UBM.
When he talks about the future of media, you can sense he brings a wider
experience than most to the subject.
In fact, he is a bit different from any other media boss you might meet. He
has long campaigned for the antipoverty group Action Aid and the
Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation body One Voice, and that do-good instinct
infuses his work. Last year he took his top team to India to observe the
work of nongovernmental organisations there — all to back up UBM’s move into
emerging markets.
Why? He gives a gnomic answer: “A point of view is a view from a point. And
physically taking them to another point gives them a different view. That’s
important.”
Really? Levin nods his closely shaven head. His wife, it turns out, shares the
same passions. Lindsay Levin, a former entrepreneur of the year
award-winner, now runs Leaders’ Quest, a not-for-profit venture that takes
bosses to the Third World to broaden their outlooks. Friends say her
influence is sizeable.
And David Levin, it is clear, is a boss comfortable with doing things his own
way. In his office, high up in Ludgate House near London’s Blackfriars
Bridge, pictures of his young sons decorate the walls. A Tottenham Hotspur
scarf hangs on the back of the door.
At UBM he has found a vehicle well suited to his restless drive. Hired to
reshape the group following Hollick’s exit in 2005, he has bought and sold
prodigiously, raising £735m for its market-research group NOP, seller’s
bible Exchange & Mart, TV multiplex SDN and a 35% stake in Five, the TV
channel. He has since paid £900m back to shareholders in dividends and
buybacks.
UBM is still clinging to a 20% stake in ITN, which Levin says he is in no
hurry to sell. Likewise PR Newswire, its highly profitable distribution
service for corporate announcements in America. That sits uneasily with the
firm’s growing focus on trade magazines and data bases, but he will only
sell if the offer is right.
Has he had an offer? “What’s an offer?” Analysts say £630m. “That’s not an
offer, that’s a guy on my sofa saying a number.”
And he laughs good-naturedly. More interesting is what he has bought: £165m
worth last year, including the American trade and transport data provider
Commonwealth Business Media. Then there are the little add-ons, among them
businesses that sold for peak prices in the past, such as OAG (Official
Airline Guides), once bought by Robert Max-well for $750m (£383m) in 1988,
picked up by Levin for £2.5m. And the American computer trade show Comdex,
sold for $2 billion in the internet boom, snapped up by Levin as part of a
$65m deal.
What he is putting together, he says, is a variety of ways for his customers
(advertisers) to reach their audience (readers) — through magazines and
websites, through linked events and conferences, through data bases and
search engines that readers will want to use, all in targeted, niche sectors.
“I was in the West Coast of America a fortnight ago and the engagement is
palpable. Customers say, ‘How do you help me? Which levers do I pull?’ And
it’s not a process of saying, ‘Hey, have a double-page spread’. It’s ‘here’s
a package of things you can try, some big, some little, some
customer-bespoke’.”
Can bigger media groups learn from this? He nods again. “I think the lessons
are universal. The big lessons here are how broad-band is changing the way
people use media, and how important face-to-face is. In the virtual world,
the value of face-to-face goes up, not down.”
How that would apply to newspapers, for example, he is not saying — beyond
underlining the fact that he doesn’t want to buy any. For Levin, niche is
where the money is.
But is he right? Levin’s admirers argue that his experience outside media has
enabled him to see things others have missed. “People who have spent their
whole lives in a sector can’t think of new ways of doing things,” says one
former colleague. “But David can.”
Others wonder if UBM is in as good a shape as the results suggest. Levin
encourages his managers to experiment, without offering too much of a road
map — only time will show if the innovations can generate long-term revenue
growth.
Yet confidence has never been an issue for Levin. He combines it with a
formidable work ethic. “The cliché about immigrants working harder is true,”
he grins. “My father had lost everything, we had to build from scratch and
there was a context for higher expectations.”
His elder brother and sister — now an executive at Novartis and a writer
respectively — went to a comprehensive. Levin was privately educated at St
Paul’s. By then his father was advising Kenneth Kaunda, president of
Zam-bia, while his mother worked in human rights. Imagine her surprise when
he decided to join the British Army before Oxford. As a “rent-a-pip”
officer, he had a platoon of Geordies to command. “It had a huge impact on
me,” he says. “I learnt a lot about people.”
And that stuck with him, as he looked for hands-on management experience. For
Apax, he helped to run a British abrasives company that made sandpaper and
grinding tools. Alan Fletcher, who mentored him there, remembers Levin as
“very mature, very sympathetic and very good with people”.
A few years later, in New York, he was running Institutional Investor magazine
for Euromoney. Padraic Fallon, Euromoney’s chairman, hired Levin as finance
director, and describes him as an analytical strategist whose likeable
optimism always won people over. “What I miss most is just his ability to be
cheerful,” says Fallon. “Even when it was tough he would bounce into the
office.”
Levin left Euromoney — on good terms — because he wanted a bigger challenge.
That took him to handheld-computer maker Psion, where he became chief
executive in 1999, taking over from founder David Potter.
There he tasted failure, presiding over Psion’s fall from the FTSE 100 — less
his fault, more the result of its overvaluation before. Later at Symbion,
part-owned by Psion, he oversaw a string of deals, bringing in Siemens,
Samsung and Sony Ericsson as investors. He eventually left, he says, because
he missed media’s quick turnround.
He has certainly indulged in that at UBM, where his rational plausibility has
offered a calm contrast to the blitz of transactional activity behind the
scenes. And he promises there is more to come.
The question is, will he stay when the dust clears? Jumping ship to regain
that FTSE 100 slot — which he held at Psion — might tempt him. Levin says he
has enough to do at UBM.
“The exciting thing in this business is that there is no pat answer to
anything. We can see trends, to a greater or lesser extent they will apply
to different sectors, and the art is helping managers to see where they
work.”
In other words, he favours the rational approach, but likes to leave himself
open to opportunities. Investors will hope the good start continues.
DAVID LEVIN’S WORKING DAY
THE UBM chief executive wakes at 6am at his house in Richmond, southwest
London. “I spend half an hour clearing the e-mail traffic,” says David
Levin, “then have breakfast with my boys.” He takes the Tube into UBM’s head
office in Southwark, arriving at 8.30am. “My days are gloriously varied:
product groups presenting, events, evaluations, meetings with potential
acquisitions.” He takes contacts to lunch at the Laughing Gravy vegetarian
restaurant nearby. He works until after 7pm, then often has a trade press
function to attend. “I have a well-used tuxedo.” About two weeks a month he
will be travelling around UBM’s subsidiaries abroad.
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:January 28, 1962
Marital status:married, three sons
School:St Paul’s London
University:Wadham College, Oxford and Stanford, America
First job:2nd Lieutenant, British Army
Salary package:£1m, including bonus
Car:blue VW Polo
Homes:Richmond and Thollon, France
Favourite book:Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien
Favourite music:U2 and Eurythmics
Favourite film:The Lion in Winter
Favourite gadget:Nokia E61 smart phone
Last holiday:France
DOWNTIME
DAVID LEVIN spends his weekends helping to coach a mini-rugby team for
under11s. He also likes to ski. Much of his spare time is otherwise taken up
with extracurricular work at nongovernmental organisations. “It’s usually to
do with development economics and the Middle East,” he says. “It’s important
as an act of responsibility that you give back.”
When he can, he also goes to watch Tottenham Hotspur — he has been a fan since
the age of 14. “I used to stand on the Shelf in the 1980s,” he says,
referring to the lower East Stand, home of Tottenham’s hardcore followers.
“I dream of the glory days.”
