Four senior directors at Incisive Media will share more than £18 million after private equity firm Apax agreed to buy the specialist business-to-business publisher they run for £199 million in cash.

Tim Weller, the chief executive with more than 5.3 million shares in Incisive, is worth £10.34 million based on Apax's recommended 195p a share offer.

James Hanbury, the chief operating officer, is worth £4.35 million, while Jamie Campbell-Harris, the finance director, and Nick Rapley, the managing director of the investment division, between them hold shares worth nearly £3.6 million.

But the four executives will reinvest £5.9 million, or about 30 per cent of their proceeds from the Apax deal, to take an 11.9 per cent stake in a new holding company, Apax Summer, that will control the media group.

The rapidly growing Incisive publishes specialist magazines including Risk, Investment Week, Your Mortgage and Legal Week.

Apax, which is paying a premium of about 13 per cent to the 173p closing price of Incisive Media shares yesterday, said it would invest in expanding the portfolio of brands and develop the online and events business.

It also said management would pursue acquisitions in the media sector.

"Given the medium term investment horizon required to pursue this strategy, Apax Partners believes that the next stage of Incisive Media's development will be best achieved under private ownership," Apax said.

Shares in Incisive Media jumped nearly 12 per cent, up 20.5p to 193.5p, although with the value remaining below Apax's agreed price, the suggestion is investors are not predicting a rival bidder will emerge.

Patrick Yau, an analyst at Bridgewell, said: "Having been left behind in the recent M&A activity across the B2B space and looking sub-scale, the company has decided to remove itself from the scrutiny of the public markets and use its private equity backing to do further roll-up deals behind closed doors."

Mr Yau said the "relatively low take-out valuation" for Incisive did not preclude another suitor gatecrashing the deal, although he said it was not attractive as the recent hard-fought battle by Euromoney to take control of Metal Bulletin.

Details of the takeover came as Incisive posted a 4 per cent increase in pre-tax profits for the six months to the end of June, on revenues up 37 per cent at nearly £33 million.

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