FEARS about a looming advertising downturn and a slowing economy have ramped up the pressure on media shares. In the past six months, WPP is down 22%, Trinity Mirror has dived by 38% while publishing giants Reed Elsevier and Pearson have slipped 12% and 18% respectively.

So it may seem odd to think of Informa, the business-publishing and exhibitions group, as a relatively defensive share. Right now, the market does not seem too convinced – the shares have slumped 21% in the past six months.

But that looks like a mistake. Informa, a diverse, £2 billion business, has come a long way from its roots as a trade-magazine publisher best known for Lloyd’s List.

Informa’s strategy has been to combine publishing, training and events businesses. Earlier this year, it paid £502m to snap up information and research group Datamonitor. The deal will create the chance to sell research to Informa’s publishing and conference customers and drive up Datamonitor’s 20%-plus top-line growth.

Informa’s real strength is its small exposure to cyclical advertising. According to a recent report by analysts at Bear Stearns, about 75% of its revenues and 90% of its earnings are renewable. Advertising is a measly 3% of revenues against 25%-40% for most rivals.

At half-year results in August, underlying operating profits jumped 24%, and an upbeat David Gilbertson, chief executive, hiked the dividend by 70%.

Meanwhile, the business-publishing and events market also looks reasonably robust.

However, there have been doubters – analysts have accused Informa of overpaying for Datamonitor. Another potential downside is the impact of a weak dollar.

The shares look good value at 463p, way below the rejected 630p-per-share takeover bid from rival Springer Science & Business Media last year, and are trading at about 11 times forecast earnings next year. Informa is a media oddity worth snapping up.

Premier Oil This year has been a bit of a rocky time for Premier Oil, the oil-and-gas-exploration group.

Profits in the first six months of the year fell sharply from $90m (£43.9m) to $68.5m as the group was hit hard by acquisition costs and charges for drilling wells that failed to come up trumps.

But this week Premier should lift some of the gloom. The group is expected to announce it has done a deal to double gas production from its Indonesian interests and supply it to a partner in Singapore. The deal will also allow Premier to book 60m barrels of its 140m unbooked reserves.

As any oilman knows, part of being successful in the business is not just finding the reserves, but getting them to market.

Behind the exploration disappointments, Premier’s production operations are growing strongly, and the group looks set to beat its target of increasing production from 37,000 barrels a day oil equivalent to 50,000 by 2010.

Premier also has interesting exploration prospects in Vietnam and the Congo.

Although the shares (currenlty at £11.64) have been pushed up by bid rumours, they are trading below the group’s core net asset value, with some analysts setting targets as high as £16.20.

grant.ringshaw@sunday-times.co.uk

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