Encyclopaedia Britannica Seeks Capital to Repay Safra’s Debt

(Bloomberg) -- Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., the publisher of the namesake encyclopedia and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is looking to raise fresh capital to repay debts of its Swiss owner Jacob E. Safra, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

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The company has tapped Jefferies Financial Group Inc. to sound out private lenders over a more than $450 million capital raise that will also include an equity component, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a private transaction. Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG are also working on the financing, one of them said.

The funds will be used to repay some of Safra’s existing debt, which is unrelated to the Britannica group, according to the people. Conversations are preliminary and details of the financing may change, they said. Safra, who is the nephew of the late Swiss banker Edmond J. Safra, purchased Britannica in 1996 and serves as the company’s chairman.

Representatives for Encyclopaedia Britannica, Jefferies, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

IPO Plans

The talks over a capital raise come months after the Chicago-based company announced it had confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. The new capital raise may delay a potential IPO, though the company is still committed to execute that plan, one of the people said.

Britannica was seeking a valuation of about $1 billion in its IPO, Bloomberg News previously reported. The publisher has been weighing a listing in the U.S. since at least 2022 and previously considered raising private capital.

Founded more than 250 years ago, the Britannica is the oldest English-language general encyclopedia, according to its website. The publisher has pivoted in recent years from print encyclopedias into digital editions and online learning.

Its subsidiaries include Britannica Education and Melingo AI, an artificial intelligence-powered natural language processing platform used in language learning and dictionaries. Britannica’s products have over 7 billion page views annually and are used by more than 150 million students, its website shows.

--With assistance from Felipe Marques.

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