Rigby returns to the fray

Congratulations to Roger Bootle and Peter Rigby.

On Friday, Bootle, the top City economist, finally got round to completing a deal to sell a 35pc stake in the economics consultancy to Lloyds Development Capital. As part of that deal, Peter Rigby, the former chief executive of Informa, makes his return to business-to-business publishing industry by becoming a director of Capital Economics.

Here is a link to report by The Times on the Capital Economics deal:

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article4247334.ece

For readers that are not familiar with Rigby, he ran FTSE 250-listed publishing company Informa for over twenty years until he retired in 2013.

I wonder, though, whether the Capital Economics deal will be the only transaction Rigby is involved with over the coming months?

Readers might be scratching their heads as to why have posited such a question. Well, over the last few weeks I have been trying to stack up a story up that Rigby has been working with private equity firm Charterhouse on sourcing potential investments in digital publishing, events and exhibitions.

Rigby didn't return my calls and Charterhouse declined to comment when I asked the firm about the former Informa executive's advisory role with the buy-out group.

However, people familiar with the matter did say the private equity firm has had an informal relationship with Rigby, so perhaps we will see him involved in another, potentially large, media deal in the not too distant future...