paidContent.org has been following Reed Elsevier‘s efforts to sell off its Reed Business Information division—which includes trade publications like Publishers Weekly and Library Journal—with great interest, and it’s from them that we learned yesterday of reports that Reed may offer even more vendor financing than the $330 million that has been previously mentioned—and that’s in addition to the $1.2 billion in staple financing from an assortment of financial institutions that Reed brought together—as well as the 50 or so RBI layoffs earlier this month in an effort to make the business unit’s ledgers more attractive.
It would seem that three potential buyers are still interested, with media figures like former Wall Street Journal publisherGordon Crovitz and former Economist Group CEO Helen Alexander connected to two of the three bidders. We wish we could drop in on the “Future of Business Media” conference paidContent is putting together tomorrow, where this is sure to be a hot topic of discussion; we’ll try to keep an eye out for other blogger dispatches, though…