Pre Close Update

Informa Group PLC
16 December 2002

16 December 2002

                               INFORMA Group Plc

                           Pre Close Period Statement



Informa is making a pre close period statement today ahead of its financial year
ending 31 December 2002.

Profitability in the second six months of 2002 is in line with our expectations.
Margin improvements resulting from continuing tight control over costs and price
increases above inflation for many of our products have countered the impact of
revenues which are below last year's level. Included in the profit and loss
account are restructuring costs for the year that are likely to be around £2.5m.
These will generate annualised savings in excess of £8m.

The group continues to be highly cash generative and enjoys a high ratio of
operating cash flow to operating profit conversion. This has enabled us to
reduce net debt levels this year and provides us with a firm basis to maintain
the dividend at the same level as 2001.

Subscription income, which accounts for around one third of total Group revenue,
has held firm with renewal rates on our electronic and hard copy business
information products continuing to average above 80%. This has underpinned the
strong performance from our Finance & Insurance division in particular where a
significant majority of the profit is derived from subscriptions. Our Law, Tax
and Commodities divisions, which also enjoy a high proportion of subscription
revenue, have also performed well.

Advertising income in our publications, which accounted for 13% of Group sales
in 2001, has run on average 16% below last year. This decline has particularly
affected the Maritime, Trade & Transport division where 36% of 2001's revenue
was derived from advertising. This division has performed more strongly in the
second half though its full year performance is still below 2001.

Life Sciences continues to be our fastest growing market as the division builds
successfully on its strong positions in the pharmaceutical and bio-technology
markets. We have seen growth in both our science publishing activity and the
related scientific events business.

Across our other areas of conference activity, delegate, sponsorship and
exhibition revenues have held up satisfactorily, enabling our strong second half
programme of events to deliver the expected profit. Although smaller niche
conferences continue to be challenging and have seen no improvement in revenues,
our larger events have shown good growth, particularly in sponsorship and
exhibition income. The outlook for our larger events in 2003 is promising with
sponsorship packages and exhibition space for 3GSM (February), Bluetooth (June)
and Drug Discovery Technology (August) already nearly sold out.

The Group continues to respond to market demand with new product launches. In
particular we have just run our first Bluetooth congress in the USA and will
stage an Asian version of the event in September 2003. We have also established
joint ventures with the Xinhua Financial Network in China and with Expomedia in
Russia, both of which look promising at this stage. In addition we will launch
two major new scientific journals - Bio-Processing International and Pre-Clinica
-- early next year as part of the continued development of the BioTechniques
scientific publishing division.



                                    - ends -

For more information, please contact:

Jim Wilkinson, Finance Director, Informa Group plc      Tel: [phone]

Catherine Lees/Zoe Sanders, Bell Pottinger Financial    Tel: [phone]




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