Reed Elsevier

Harcourt General Inc. on Wednesday agreed to buy Times Mirror Co.'s Mosby Inc. for $415 million in cash, boosting its presence in the fast-growing health-publishing industry. Mosby's publications, which are concentrated in the fields of nursing and allied health, include 3,000 books and 100 periodicals distributed in 41 countries and have annual revenue of $225 million. The acquisition is expected to lower Harcourt's profit by 10 cents to 15 cents a share in the first 12 months.

Marketcast, one of three dominant research firms in the movie industry, has been sold to Shamrock Capital.  Like its competitors Nielsen NRG and OTX, Marketcast provides studios with box office predictions based on audience research and also consults on marketing campaigns to help determine which advertisements and trailers are most effective with different audience segments. Its prior owner was Reed Business Information, a division of Dutch media giant Reed Elsevier that also owns the trade publication Variety.

U.S. regulators Wednesday told banks to develop programs to quickly warn federal officials and customers of suspected cases of identity theft, a growing type of fraud that costs consumers billions. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors joined other thrift regulators in demanding greater vigilance and quick action, after a flurry of recent announcements from banks and data companies that customer information had been stolen or lost.

Federal agents have carried out searches in at least two states as part of an investigation into the theft of Social Security numbers and other personal information from database giant LexisNexis Inc., authorities said Thursday. Secret Service and FBI agents executed a search warrant in Minnesota, and FBI agents conducted 10 searches in Northern California. The search in Minnesota is "definitely the LexisNexis case," said Mike Brooks, an FBI spokesman in Ohio.

Nielsen Co. is rolling the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and its other media publications and conference organizers into a new Entertainment Group, and has put a former Variety chief in charge, the company said Wednesday. The move comes about a week after rival Reed-Elsevier said it would put up for sale its own business publishing unit, which includes show business paper Daily Variety, Publishers Weekly and others.

Bowing to concerns about electronic privacy intrusions, Reed Elsevier unit Lexis-Nexis said it will allow consumers to easily look at some of the personal information it keeps on file about them. The move comes two weeks after U.S. regulators grilled the online industry about the potential for privacy invasions. The Federal Trade Commission hearing was in response to concerns that companies offering computerized information are compromising consumers' privacy rights.

MAID, a money-losing British electronic information provider, said Thursday that it will acquire Knight-Ridder Information Inc. in a $420-million deal that would create the world's largest online information company. KR Information, part of U.S. newspaper publisher Knight-Ridder Inc., owns huge databases containing the equivalent of 6 billion pages of text. It is a key information provider to research libraries in corporate, government and academic institutions.

Walt Disney Co.'s ABC Inc. sold its Nils Publishing Co. unit, with $25 million in annual revenue, to Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer as Disney sheds businesses that don't mesh with its entertainment focus. Price and terms weren't disclosed. A Wolters Kluwer spokeswoman declined to comment, and a Disney spokesman couldn't immediately be reached. Nils, an insurance law publishing concern, will become part of Wolters Kluwer's CCH Inc. tax and business law publishing unit in Riverwoods, Ill.

Avenue Capital, a New York hedge fund whose holdings include the parent company of the National Enquirer, is now the leading bidder for Variety. A late entrant in the sales process being run by Variety corporate parent Reed Elsevier, Avenue had bid more than $40 million, according to a person close to the process who was not authorized to speak publicly. Avenue invests primarily in "distressed and undervalued assets," according to its website, and has $12 billion worth of holdings.

Leo Wolinsky, a former top editor at the Los Angeles Times, has been named editor of Daily Variety, a Hollywood business publication. Before leaving the paper last year, Wolinsky worked at The Times for 31 years in various senior positions, including executive editor and managing editor. He was part of Pulitzer Prize-winning teams that covered the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and the Northridge earthquake in 1994. In 2008 he served as associate editor in charge of features and entertainment for seven months, his only previous experience covering the show-business world.