The company revealed in its preliminary results yesterday (21 February) that it would follow up the successful sale of its Harcourt Education division for £2.5bn with the divestment of Reed Business Information (RBI) as it looks to escape the volatile print advertising market.

It backed this with a £2.1bn spend on ChoicePoint, a US risk assessment and analytics firm, which further cements its position in the market of "online workflow solutions" with predictable subscription-based revenues.

Reed Elsevier chief executive Sir Crispin Davis said: "RBI is a well-managed, high-quality business, as evidenced by the success of its online growth and the control of costs."

Commentators warned that the poor credit climate might mean a sale would take time to achieve, but that Reed had maintained it would hold out for a good price.

RBI publishes around 30m copies of its 100-plus UK magazines each year, with more than 800,000 subscribers across titles such as New Scientist.

Polestar currently prints 22 of these at Chantry and Colchester in a contract that extends until 2011.