RELX plc (pronounced "Rel-ex") is a British[2] 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 organise exhibitions. It operates in 40 countries and serves customers in over 180 nations.[3] It was previously known as Reed Elsevier, and 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 is publicly listed, with shares traded on the London Stock Exchange, Amsterdam Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbols: London: REL, Amsterdam: REN, New York: RELX). The company is one of the constituents of the FTSE 100 Index, AEX Index, Financial Times Global 500 and Euronext 100 Index.
The company, which was previously known as Reed Elsevier, 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.[4] The company re-branded itself as RELX in February 2015.[5]
In 1895, Albert E. Reed established a newsprint manufacturing operation at Tovil Mill near Maidstone, Kent.[6] The Reed family were Methodists and encouraged good working conditions for their staff in the then-dangerous print trade.[7]
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.[8]
In 1970, Reed Group merged with the International Publishing Corporation and the company name was changed to Reed International Limited.[6] The company continued to grow by merging with other publishers and produced high quality trade journals as IPC Business Press Ltd and women's and other consumer magazines as IPC magazines Ltd.[6] Reed entered the United States in 1977 by acquiring Cahners Publications, founded by Norman Cahners.[9]
In 1985, the company decided to rationalise its operations, focusing on publishing and selling off its other interests. Sanderson was sold to WestPoint Pepperell, Inc. of Georgia, United States, that year,[8] while Crown Paint and Polycell were sold to Williams Holdings in 1987.[10] The company's paper and packaging production operations were bundled together to form Reedpack and sold to private equity firm Cinven in 1988.[11] Reed expanded its publishing by acquiring Technical Publishing from Dun & Bradstreet.[12]
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.[6] Robbers named the company after the old Dutch printers family Elzevir,[6] which, for example, published the works of Erasmus in 1587. Elsevier NV originally was based in Rotterdam but moved to Amsterdam in the late 1880s.[6]
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, USA, 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.[13]
Cahners Publishing, founded by Norman Cahners, was the largest U.S. publisher of trade[14] or business magazines as of his death in 1986. Reed International acquired the company in 1977.[15][16]
In February 1997, Reed Elsevier divested its trade publishing group (including Heinemann, Methuen, Secker & Warburg, Sinclair-Stevenson, Mandarin, Minerva and Cedar) to Random House.[50] In 1998, Reed Elsevier sold the children's divisions of Heinemann, Methuen, Hamlyn and Mammoth to the Egmont Group.[51]
In February 2007, the company announced its intention to sell Harcourt, its educational publishing division.[52] 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.[53] 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.[54]
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%.[55] Advertising, which had been the largest source of revenues when RELX was founded, represented just 1% of sales in 2018.[56]
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.[57]
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.[58]
Variety, the company's last remaining North American title, was sold in October 2012.[59]
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.[60][61][62]
In 2016, RELX sold Elsevier Weekly and BeleggersBelangen in the Netherlands.[63]
In 2017, the company sold New Scientist magazine.[64]
In January 2019, RBI sold its Dutch agricultural media and selected international agricultural media portfolio (including Poultry World) to Doorakkeren BV.[65]
In August 2019, Flight International and FlightGlobal were sold to DVV Media Group.[66]
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.[67]
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 18 million documents.[68]
Scopus is a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles. It contains more than 50 million items in more 20,000 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide.[69]
Mendeley is a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online.[70]
Elsevier is the world's largest publisher of academic articles. It published 600,000 articles in 2021.[71] 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.[72]
LexisNexis Risk Solutions provide decision-making tools which help banks spot money launderers and insurance companies weed out fraudulent claims.[73]
The business claims to have saved the state of Florida more than $60 million a year by preventing benefit fraud.[74]
Accuity provides financial crime compliance software[75] which allows institutions to comply with sanctions and anti-money laundering compliance programmes.[76] It offers Know Your Customer, KYC, online subscription-based data and software for the financial services industry.[77] The company's services include helping banks and financial institutions screen for high risk customers and transactions,[78] and providing databases such as Bankers Almanac which allows clients to find and validate bank payment routing data.[76] Accuity serves financial services clients worldwide.[77]
Cirium (previously known as FlightGlobal) provides data and aviation analytics products to the aviation, finance and travel industries.[79]
RELX's legal business operates under the LexisNexis brand. Many of LexisNexis' brands date back to the nineteenth century or earlier. These include Butterworths and Tolley in the UK and JurisClasseur in France.[80] In 2019, 85% of its revenues were electronic. The LexisNexis legal and news database contains 119bn documents and records.[81]
RELX's exhibitions business is called RX, formerly Reed Exhibitions until 2021.[82] It is the world's largest exhibitions company, running 500 shows for 140,000 exhibitors and 7m visitors.[83][84]
ReedPop, part of RX, organises popular culture events including New York Comic Con and PAX.[85] In February 2018, ReedPop acquired Gamer Network,[86] a British Mass Media company that owns a number of video game journalism sites including Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun and VG247.[87] Ecommerce store The Haul focused on pop culture memorabilia and merchandise was launched in 2021.[88] Popverse, a popular culture website, was founded in 2022.[89] It sold the Gamer Network to IGN Entertainment, division of Ziff Davis, in May 2024. However, it retained the Popverse outlet.[90][91]
As of 2021,[update] the board of directors consisted of:[92]
In 2019, Harvard Business Review ranked Erik Engström the world's 11th best performing CEO.[93]
In August 2020, RELX announced Sir Anthony Habgood would retire as Chair, to be replaced by Paul Walker in the first half of 2021.[94]
From 2011 to 2014, the average annual value of disposals was about $300m.[35] The predictability of the company's results in recent years has led to a re-rating of the shares.[95][96][97]
The RELX Environmental Challenge awards grants to p