Danson and TMN

Knowing the readership of HotViews, I know that quite a few of you will be interested in Mike Danson’s doings now that he has departed Datamonitor (which bought Ovum in Dec 06 and was itself bought by Informa in 2007.

Last week, Danson upped his stake in internet marketing company TMN to 10.5%. He’s been buying at various prices from 45p and is in competition with Tangent who have launched a £30m/50p bid for TMN. TMN is in the course of ‘digesting’ its own merger with Internet Business Group last December.

TMN had revenues of £16.1m and PBT of £3.18m in 2007 – a pretty impressive 20% PBT margin

TMN Chairman is Peter Harkness who was also an NED at Datamonitor. He was appointed to the Datamonitor board when they acquired the Butler Group where Harkness was the Chairman.

Whether Danson has intervened to help get a better price for TMN (some commentators are suggesting a target 70p price) or Danson sees TMN as his vehicle to build a new media empire, is unclear. TMN would not be a bad place for Danson to start again. TMN has three divisions – online marketing (tmn media), agency (edr) and research (the ID factor). Danson, who has netted well in excess of £100m from his Datamonitor holding over the last few years, certainly has the funds to do what he likes with TMN or anyone else.