Reed Business Information (RBI), a unit of Reed Business and Reed Elsevier, has acquired Commercial Aviation Report and Commercial Aviation Value Report from London-based Commercial Aviation Media (CAM). RBI will integrate the titles into its Flight portfolio, which contains Flight International and Airline Business magazines, the http://www.flightglobal.com/ web portal, the Air Transport Intelligence (ATI) service and the ACAS fleet database.

RBI plans to cease publishing CAM's magazines in print and will transition the publications online to complement Flight's ATI news and data service. The publications will be rebranded as Flight Commercial Aviation Online and will cover the latest aircraft deal transactions, new aircraft and airline financings, analysis of airline financials, expert industry comment and financial gossip from the aviation market. In addition, Flight will will also benefit from PBI's new ownership of CAM events--The U.S. Valuation Conference and The European Aviation Conference. Flight already manages several aviation conferences, including the Network series and the new Asian Aerospace Congress.

RBI also plans to tap into CAM leadership. Laura Mueller and Olivier Bonnassies, who edited and published CAM's magazines will join RBI and report to Flight’s managing editor Andrew Doyle at Flight's U.K. headquarters.

This deal effectively expands RBI's presence in the aviation market by combining Flight's expertise in the aerospace industry with CAM's knowledge of the air finance market. It would certainly have been too great a challenge to create CAM's content on its own; and purchasing a well-established brand is usually a good move. With the market recognition and deep pockets that RBI can provide, look for the entire CAM portfolio to be enhanced in features and functionality going forward.

It's interesting that RBI is abandoning the print products so quickly, but company officials must feel strongly that this market would be better served (and perhaps prefer) to access its content through the online ATI service. If anything, it's a smart cost-saving move.