Incisive Media, a business-to-business publisher, is being split into two after breaching its banking covenants late last year. Apax Partners, its private equity owner, will keep control of the ALM business in the US, while banks will take over the UK arm. According to the FT, ALM's operations have proved more resilient to the downturn than Incisive’s more cyclical magazine and conference operations in the UK (which include Legal Week magazine and the Strategic IT Forum which is held each spring in Spain/Portugal). Apax has agreed to inject $15m of fresh equity into ALM as part of the debt-for-equity swap deal with RBS.  Apax’s stake will fall from 71% to 51%, with RBS owning the rest and having the right to one board seat. ALM’s management, led by William Pollack, are being issued fresh equity.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate is now 9.7% (over 14.9 million people) as of the end of August, the highest since 1983 – and it is thought likely the number of unemployed will continue to grow through the remainder of 2009. These figures once more raise the question of whether we are in a 'V' shaped recession – or a 'W' shaped one and that the so-called green shoots of recovery we are seeing in the UK are merely a 'dead cat bounce'.

It was also interesting to hear the debate at last month's ILTA conference over what will be the new 'norm'. When the economy recovers, will markets, prices and business recover to their pre-recession levels before continuing their upward trend – or were the last few years a freak hire fuelled by crazy City money and property speculation that will come to be seen as an historical anomally and that the new norm will turn out to be a lower figure, say on 2002/2003 trading levels. (In which case its going to be time for a lot of VCs and PEs to get out their brown trousers.)