Reed plans 500 mln stg buyback, simplifying structure

LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Anglo Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier (Amsterdam: REN.AS - news) plans to return 500 million pounds ($777 million) to investors via a share buyback after reporting an as expected 3 percent rise in full-year underlying sales.

Europe's largest media group said business trends in the early part of 2015 had remained consistent with 2014 trends and said it would simplify its structure by combining all its assets below the two parent companies into a single new group entity.

Reed reported full-year revenue of 5.8 billion pounds, up 3 percent when stripping out the impact of biennial events, and in line with forecasts.

($1 = 0.6437 pounds) (Reporting by Kate Holton, Editing by Paul Sandle)