Tycoon Danson in new deal
NORTH west-born tycoon Michael Danson, who founded and sold market intelligence business Datamonitor, making £80m along the way, is back on the deals trail.
Wigan-born, Bury raised Mr Danson, who went to Bolton Grammar School before studying law at Oxford is to take control of research and direct marketing group TMN after a reverse takeover.
The proposed deal will see TMN, which owns research agencies ID Factor and ICD Research, acquire all the shares in Mr Danson’s company Progressive Digital Media by issuing the entrepreneur with more than 290 million of its own shares.
The combined group will then change its name to Progressive Digital Media.
Mr Danson, who owns media titles such as The New Statesman and Press Gazette, already owned 28% of TMN and will now hold 84.87% of the combined group.
The proposal will be voted on at an EGM on 24 June and, if the deal is agreed, shares in the combined company will be re-admitted to the stock exchange the next day.
Mr Danson founded Datamonitor at his home in1989. He floated it 11 years later and it was
sold to publishing group Informa in 2007 for £502m. Progressive Digital Media has an office on Manchester Science Park.
In April this year he rescued Press Gazette, the industry magazine for journalists which was set to close down. The deal came a year after he bought into New Statesman, the respected political magazine.
