B2B publisher Informa on Friday launched a £242 million rights issue in a bid to alleviate some of the debt it took on as part of its £510 million Datamonitor acquisition in 2007. In an interim management statement, the company says trading for Q109 is ahead of the same quarter last year: income for the year to March 31 was £344 million compared with £281 million last year. Datamonitor and magazine division Informa Business Information both showed “good progress” in the quarter and Informa revealed that Datamonitor added 1,000 subscribers since the acquisition. Release

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—Tax switch: Thanks to new tax measures from the UK government, the company says it plans to create a new parent company, New Informa, which will be incorporated in Jersey but tax resident in Switzerland to avoid paying UK tax, though the business will remain listed on the London Stock Exchange. Specifically, the company likes the Swiss banking system because it doesn’t “seek to impose tax on the unremitted profits of subsidiary companies in other jurisdictions”, namely Informa’s growing interests in South Asia, the Middle East and China. Informa follows WPP and B2B publisher UBM in escaping the UK for tax reasons.

—Savings Informa made some serious cost-savings in 2008 through redundancies and other restructuring measures which cost the business £17 million but are expected to save £33 million a year. Expect more “significant cost savings” this year.