RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British multinational information and analytics company headquartered in London, England. Its businesses provide scientific, technical and medical information and analytics; legal information and analytics; decision-making tools; and event organisation. It operates in 40 countries and serves customers in over 180 nations. Previously known as Reed Elsevier, the company came into being in 1993 through the merger of Reed International, a British trade book and magazine publisher, and Elsevier, a Netherlands-based scientific publisher.
The company is publicly listed, with shares traded on the London Stock Exchange, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. The company is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, the AEX Index, the Financial Times Global 500 and the Euronext 100 Index.
History Previously known as Reed Elsevier, the company came into being in 1993 as a result of the merger of Reed International, a British trade book and magazine publisher, and Elsevier, a Netherlands-based scientific publisher. The company rebranded itself as RELX in February 2015.
Reed International In 1895, Albert E. Reed established a newsprint manufacturing operation at Tovil Mill near Maidstone, Kent. The Reed family was Methodist and encouraged good working conditions for their staff in the then-dangerous print trade.
In 1965, Reed Group, as it was then known, became a conglomerate, creating its Decorative Products Division with the purchase of Crown Paints, Polycell and Sanderson's wallpaper and DIY decorating interests.
In 1970, Reed Group merged with the International Publishing Corporation and the company name was changed to Reed International Limited. The company continued to grow by merging with other publishers, producing high-quality trade journals under IPC Business Press Ltd and women's and other consumer magazines under IPC Magazines Ltd. Reed entered the United States in 1977 by acquiring Cahners Publishing, founded by Norman Cahners.
In 1985, the company decided to rationalise its operations by focusing on publishing and selling off its other interests. Sanderson was sold to WestPoint Pepperell, Inc. of Georgia, United States, that year, while Crown Paints and Polycell were sold to Williams Holdings in 1987. The company's paper and packaging production operations were bundled together to form Reedpack and sold to the private equity firm Cinven in 1988. Reed then expanded its publishing division by acquiring Technical Publishing from Dun & Bradstreet.
Elsevier NV In 1880, Jacobus George Robbers started a publishing company called NV Uitgeversmaatschappij Elsevier (Elsevier Publishing Company NV) to publish literary classics and the encyclopedia Winkler Prins. Robbers named the company after the old Dutch printers family Elzevir, which, for example, had published the works of Erasmus in 1587. Elsevier NV was originally based in Rotterdam but moved to Amsterdam in the late 1880s.
Up to the 1930s, Elsevier remained a small family-owned publisher, with no more than ten employees. After the war it launched the weekly Elsevier magazine, which turned out to be very profitable. A rapid expansion followed. Elsevier Press Inc. started in 1951 in Houston, Texas, US, and in 1962 publishing offices were opened in London and New York. Multiple mergers in the 1970s led to name changes, settling at "Elsevier Scientific Publishers" in 1979. In 1991, two years before the merger with Reed, Elsevier acquired Pergamon Press in the UK.
Cahners Publishing Cahners Publishing, founded by Norman Cahners, was the largest U.S. publisher of trade or business magazines as of his death in 1986. Reed International acquired the company in 1977.
Reed Elsevier and RELX
Significant acquisitions Division or subsidiary of RELX Date Acquisition Value Cahners Publishing 1986–09 Technical Publishing Inc, a publisher of industrial, medical and technology trade magazines, from Dun & Bradstreet $250 million Reed Elsevier 1993–08 Official Airline Guides Inc, a publisher of airline schedules $425 million Reed Elsevier 1994–10 LexisNexis, an on-line information business $1.5 billion Reed Elsevier 1997–03 MDL Information Systems Inc, a US software systems and information database developer $320M Reed Elsevier 1997–06 Chilton Business Group, a US business information publishing company $447M Reed Elsevier 1998–04 Matthew Bender & Company Inc, a US publisher of legal information $1.65bn Reed Elsevier 2000–10 Harcourt, an education publishing business $4.5bn plus debt LexisNexis 2004–07 Seisint of Boca Raton, Florida, which provided the company with access to HPCC Systems for the first time $775M Reed Elsevier 2005–05 Medimedia, a medical publisher whose imprints included Medicine Publishing and Masson $270M Reed Elsevier 2008–02 Choicepoint, which had been a spinoff of Equifax's Insurance Services Group in August 1997. The acquisition was completed in September 2008. $4.1bn Reed Business Information 2008–03 Heren Energy, a London-based publisher of newsletters and market reports on the competitive wholesale energy markets in Britain and Europe. Continued as ICIS Heren. Reed Business Information 2011–06 Ascend, a London-based civil aviation data analytics company Undisclosed Reed Elsevier 2011–11 US online-data business Accuity Holdings Inc. from investment firm Investcorp £343M ($530.1M) LexisNexis Legal & Professional 2012–03 Law360, a US-based online provider of legal information and analysis Undisclosed Elsevier 2013–04 Mendeley, a London-based desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online Undisclosed but up to $100M LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2013–09 Mapflow, a Dublin-based group that helps insurance companies assess geographic risk, in particular in relation to flooding Undisclosed LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2014–04 Tracesmart, a UK-based provider of tracing, identity verification, fraud prevention and anti-money laundering software Undisclosed LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2014–05 Wunelli, a telematics data business which uses driving data for insurers, enabling them to reduce risk exposure and deliver discounts to safer drivers £25m Accuity 2014–09 Fircosoft, a Paris-based anti-money laundering company €150M LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2014–11 Health Market Science (HMS), a supplier of high quality data about US healthcare professionals Undisclosed LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2015–01 BAIR Analytics, a US-based law enforcement data company Undisclosed LexisNexis Legal & Professional 2015–07 MLex, a media organization providing exclusive analysis and commentary on regulatory risk Undisclosed Reed Business Information 2015–10 Adaptris, a fast-growing supply chain integration business Undisclosed LexisNexis Legal & Professional 2015–11 Lex Machina, a US-based online provider of legal analytics Undisclosed LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2016–07 Insurance Initiatives, Ltd. (IIL), a business which provides a data distribution platform that extracts, hosts and processes large quantities of data to deliver information predominantly into the point-of-quote in the UK's Property & Casualty Insurance industry. Undisclosed LexisNexis Legal & Professional 2017–06 Ravel Law, a San Francisco-based legal analytics company Undisclosed LexisNexis Risk Solutions 2018–01 ThreatMetrix, one of the largest repositories of online digital identities in the world £580M ($830M) Reed Exhibitions 2018–02 Gamer Network, a mass media video game journalism company UndisclosedLexisNexis Risk Solutions2020–01ID Analytics $375mLexisNexis Risk Solutions2020–02Emailage$480mElsevier2020–08Scibite£65mElsevier2022–06InterfolioUndisclosedRX2023–07Corp EventsUndisclosed
Significant divestments In February 1997, Reed Elsevier divested its trade publishing group (including Heinemann, Methuen, Secker & Warburg, Sinclair-Stevenson, Mandarin, Minerva and Cedar) to Random House. In 1998, Reed Elsevier sold the children's divisions of Heinemann, Methuen, Hamlyn and Mammoth to the Egmont Group.
In February 2007, the company announced its intention to sell Harcourt, its educational publishing division. On 4 May 2007 Pearson, the international education and information company, announced that it had agreed to acquire Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International from Reed Elsevier for $950m in cash. In July 2007, Reed Elsevier announced its agreement to sell the remaining Harcourt Education business, including international imprint Heinemann, to Houghton Mifflin for $4 billion in cash and stock.
Between 2006 and 2019, in 65 separate deals, the company systematically sold its 300 print, business to business magazine titles, reducing the proportion of print revenues from 51% to 9%. Advertising, which had been the largest source of revenues when RELX was founded, represented just 1% of sales in 2018.
In July 2009, Reed Elsevier announced its intention to sell most of its North American trade publications, including Publishers Weekly, Broadcasting & Cable, and Multichannel News, although it planned to retain Variety. Sister publication Video Business to Variety was closed in January 2010.
In April 2010, Reed Elsevier announced that it had sold 21 US magazines to other owners in recent months, and that an additional 23 US trade magazines, including Restaurants & Institutions, Hotels, and Trade Show Week would cease publication. The closures were mostly due to the weak economy including an advertising slump. Variety, the company's last remaining North American title, was sold in October 2012.
In 2014, Reed Business Information sold BuyerZone, an online marketplace; emedia, an American provider of research for IT buyers and vendors; and a majority stake in Reed Construction Data, a provider of construction data.
In 2016, RELX sold Elsevier Weekly and BeleggersBelangen in the Netherlands. In 2017, the company sold New Scientist magazine. In January 2019, RBI sold its Dutch agricultural media and selected international agricultural media portfolio (including Poultry World) to Doorakkeren BV. In August 2019, Flight International and FlightGlobal were sold to DVV Media Group. In December 2019, RBI announced plans to sell the Farmers Weekly magazine title, website and related platforms, events and awards to MA Agriculture Limited, part of the Mark Allen Group. In May 2024, RX sold the Gamer Network to IGN Entertainment, division of Ziff Davis. However, it retained the EGX convention and Popverse.
Operations and market segments Scientific, Technical & Medical RELX's Scientific, Technical & Medical business provides information, analytics and tools that help investors make decisions that improve scientific and healthcare outcomes. It operates under the name of Elsevier:
ScienceDirect, an online database of primary research, contains 16 million documents.
Scopus is a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles. It contains more than 50 million items in more than 20,000 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide.
Mendeley is a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online.
Elsevier is the world's largest publisher of academic articles. It published 600,000 articles in 2021. Its best-known titles are The Lancet and Cell. In 1995, Forbes magazine (wrongly) predicted Elsevier would be "the first victim of the internet" as it was disrupted and disintermediated by the World Wide Web.
Risk Management LexisNexis Risk Solutions provide decision-making tools which help banks spot money launderers and insurance companies weed out fraudulent claims. The business claims to have saved the state of Florida more than $60 million a year by preventing benefit fraud. LexisNexis Risk Solutions provides data and analytics services to 85% of the Fortune 500, nine of the world's top 10 banks and 23 of the world's 25 top insurers.
Accuity Inc.