Publishing and events group United Business Media said it would aggressively pursue new deals but would not comment on potential target Emap.
Earlier on Friday, media group Emap said it was considering a sale or break-up. Analysts said the business offered a major acquisition opportunity for UBM.
"We continue to look very aggressively for acquisitions which will fulfil our criteria," UBM Chief Executive David Levin told Reuters in an interview, but he declined to be drawn on whether UBM was interested in looking at Emap's assets.
Emap owns magazines FHM and Grazia, radio stations Magic and Kiss and a business-to-business (B2B) publishing unit, which analysts think could fetch at least 1.2 billion pounds ($2.4 billion).
The latter operates in the same area as UBM, which publishes hundreds of newspapers, specialist magazines and directories and runs Web sites and events around the world.
"We believe the B2B assets of Emap, which are well known to UBM senior management, would be an excellent fit with UBM," said Numis Securities media analysts in a research note. Numis said it valued Emap's business-to-business assets at 1.3 billion pounds, which is 13 times underlying earnings. UBM's Gary Hughes, who heads its CMPi European magazine and events business, used to be the finance director at Emap.
A deal could entail competition issues in specialist magazine areas such as building and construction and possibly health, said Numis, adding that it could also bring a double-digit percent increase to UBM's earnings per share. UBM's Levin has been buying numerous businesses in recent years and repositioning the company to move UBM away from print and deeper into events, online media and data-based products.
Levin said during the full-year results in March that the pipeline for deals was good, although in an interview with Reuters in May, he said the premiums being paid by private equity players had left UBM on the sidelines on some occasions.
On Friday, he said the sell-off in stock and credit markets, amid concerns about a credit crunch and the health of the US economy, would help corporate buyers in their hunt for deals.
So far this year, UBM has bought 12 businesses for 69 million pounds. "When we look at the coming balance of the year, we think this injection of a degree of more reality into prices is a good thing," Levin said shortly after the company spoke to analysts about its interim results.
"It swings the balance of power somewhat more towards a corporate buyer like ourselves, who is able to deliver on promises without external funding." UBM's interim results on Friday showed the company had just under 80 million pounds of debt and that it had "substantial capital" available for acquisitions and capital returns.
"We have a busy half (year) coming, lots of things to do, and we are quite heavily second-half weighted," Levin said. UBM has consistently said its deals each meet or exceed a self-imposed target of 8 percent post-tax cost of capital in their first year of ownership.
"We believe that UBM could look to acquire (Emap's) B2B business," said UBS media analysts. "UBM confirmed they would maintain their strict acquisition criteria in any transaction, regardless of size, and therefore we believe this potential acquisition would be well received."
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