Bloomsbury’s profits were reinvested from 2006, initially in mining-related news, price and map businesses, and more recently in sustainability-related and SaaS businesses.
Performance fees from the Hedge Funds models brought BME PM and BME itself significant profits and BME started to invest in other companies servicing the metals, minerals and mining sectors, but outside price forecasting (as BME was very wary of the metal price bubbles developing at the time).
In 2006, BME bought 4.1% of Mining Communications, the owner of Mining Journal and the Mines & Money conferences – when the venture capital shareholders were being bought out. In 2008, BME bought a 10% stake in (the original) FastMarkets, which ran the websites TheBullionDesk.com, BaseMetals.com and MinorMetals.com. In 2009, BME participated in a refinancing of Intierra, of Australia, which was the global leader in the provision of maps of exploration tenements and mines, drilling results, company data and competitor intelligence. It went on to acquire Raw Materials Group of Sweden and become IntierraRMG. Those companies went into trade sales as the investments matured. BME also bought its own office building in London, while it was still operationally involved in publishing.
In 2010, BME bought into the Roskill Group and owned 40% of it before its sale in June 2021 to Wood Mackenzie. The Roskill Group comprised Roskill Holdings and four wholly owned subsidiaries: Roskill Information Services, Roskill Consulting Group, Roskill Pariser in Germany and Roskill (Shanghai) Business Consulting in China. Roskill covered over forty commodities: electric vehicle and battery raw materials, copper, hi-tech materials (including rare earths), steel and alloying elements, minor metals, industrial minerals, carbon and chemicals. The EV and battery materials focus at Roskill began the broadening of the Bloomsbury Group’s focus to include sustainability and the environment.
Bloomsbury has a track record not only of timely entry to investments, but also of successful exit.