Wilmington Regulatory News (WIL)

9 Feb 2006 07:00

Wilmington Group Plc09 February 2006 For immediate release 9 February 2006 WILMINGTON GROUP PLC Acquisition of Smee & Ford Ltd Wilmington Group plc ("Wilmington" or the "Group"), the professional informationand training group, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Smee & Ford Ltd("Smee"). Wilmington has acquired all of the issued share capital of Smee for an initialconsideration of £4.28 million in cash with a further payment of up to £0.5mbased on the future performance of Smee to 2011. The maximum aggregateconsideration payable for 100% of Smee will be £4.78m. Smee was established in the mid 19th century. Its core business is the provisionto charities in the UK of a subscription information service providing them withinformation on legacies granted in wills, along with related training andconsultancy. The great majority of the top 1,000 charities in the UK are customers of Smee. Smee also owns the rights to the market leading 'Mortascreen' deceased mailing list suppression database and 'Halo' deceased identity fraud prevention product. In the year to 31st March 2005 Smee generated profit before interest and tax of£1.046m. Changes in the business in the current year have reduced profitability,but the ongoing profitability before interest and tax of Smee is expected to bein excess of £500k pa. The acquisition of Smee will reinforce the strength of Wilmington's Legal &Regulatory division within charity and financial markets and provide excitingopportunities for leveraging key brands and databases across the Group. - ends- For further information, please contact: Wilmington Group plc 020 7422 6800 Charles Brady, Chief ExecutiveBasil Brookes, Finance Director Weber Shandwick Square Mile 020 7067 0700 Nick Oborne, Kirsty Raper or Yvonne Alexander Note to Editors Wilmington Group plc is one of the UK's leading providers of information andtraining for professional business markets. The Group provides training,arranges industry events and publishes magazines, directories, databases, andspecial reports focused primarily on its four principal sectors of Legal &Regulatory, Healthcare, Media and Entertainment and Design and Construction.Capitalised at approximately £154 million, Wilmington floated on the LondonStock Exchange in 1995. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange