Informa plc announced an update in relation to the Board, including Gareth Bullock stepping down as a Non-Executive Director at the Annual General Meeting in June and the immediate appointment of Patrick Martell as an Executive Director. Gareth Bullock has decided not to stand for re-election at this year's AGM, in order to focus on other interests. Separately, Patrick Martell joins the Board on 1 March 2021 as an Executive Director, having successfully led the Informa Intelligence Division, helping to transform a disparate collection of brands with shrinking revenues into an international digital subscription business with strong renewal rates and consistent underlying growth. Patrick also led on the effective integration of Penton Information Services in 2016/2017. In his current role as Group Chief Operating Officer, Patrick's remit includes responsibility for driving digital product and service acceleration more broadly. Another Non-Executive Board member, Gill Whitehead, who has a background in digital, data and analytics at Google and Channel Four, is currently acting as a Non-Executive advisor on Informa's Smart Connections initiative, which is chaired by Patrick, and brings together a collection of collaborative digital acceleration projects across the Group's Events-led businesses.
Informa PLC specializes in organizing events and publishing books, documents and journals. The activity is organized around four sectors:
- organization of exhibitions;
- publishing of academic and scientific research contents: human and social sciences, technology, medicine, physical sciences, etc.;
- publishing of professional and commercial contents: sciences and health, finances, legal sciences, trading, transport, telecommunication, etc.;
- organization of conferences and professional training trade shows.
The group's contents are marketed in the form of publications on paper, electronic download, and CD-ROM.
Net sales break down by activity into sale of organization of events (36.3%), subscriptions (23.6%), sale of publications (14.9%), sale of advertising space (8.1%) and other (17.1%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United Kingdom (5.7%), Continental Europe (13.4%), North America (56%), China (4.4%) and other (20.5%).