We thought it already sweetened the offer once, but now Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) plans to offer a bigger vendor loan to finance the struggling sell-off of its Reed Business Information (RBI) unit. Reed was already wooing buyers with a $330 million loan, but the divestment is treading water so hard now that Reed is considering giving even more to potential buyers, “sources” tell Telegraph.co.uk. If RBI keeps offering more leverage in this way, it may start to look sort of like RBI is buying itself...

B2B publishers have been in-play for M&A this year, but are clearly getting munched by the credit crunch. The leading bid for Lloyd’s List publisher Informa also collapsed in September after the consortium of private equity houses in the hunt found itself unable to raise the extra cash for Informa’s asking price. There would be dollops of irony if RBI’s sale was scuppered, too - Reed’s original motivation for selling was to “reduce exposure to cyclicality”; in other words, to get the hell out of an ad-funded publishing model that’s looking far too fragile at the moment.

• Reed’s RBI Sell-Off In The Balance? A Victim Of Credit Crunch?
• RBI Sale At Risk Of Falling Through As Bidding Price Drops To $1.7 billion
• RBI Sell-off Stalls Again With $180 Million Finance Shortfall