John Regazzi

John J. Regazzi is a Managing Director at Akoya Capital and leads the firm’s Professional Information Services sector. Akoya says he joined the firm in 2012 after more than 40 years in electronic information services and IT.

Before Akoya, Regazzi served as CEO of Elsevier Inc. and as a board director / managing director at Reed Elsevier, where he oversaw an electronic publishing portfolio with a staff of about 3,000 and revenues exceeding $1 billion. Earlier, he was CEO of Engineering Information, which he helped turn around before its acquisition by Reed Elsevier. His operating background includes products such as Engineering Village, ScienceDirect, Scirus, Scopus, and other online and CD-ROM-era information services.

Regazzi has also held academic and board roles. He served as dean of Long Island University’s College of Information and Computer Science and has been associated with LIU as a professor. Board roles cited by Akoya and Research Solutions include AIP Publishing, the National Technical Information Service, the British Standards Institution Group, Research Solutions, DiSTI, Inflexxion, and Converged Security Solutions.

He holds a PhD in Information Science from Rutgers University, an MS in Information Science from Columbia University, a master’s degree in Psychology and Religion from the University of Iowa, and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from St. John’s University. He authored *Infonomics and the Business of Free: Modern Value Creation for Information Services* and *Scholarly Communications: A History from Content as King to Content as Kingmaker*.

• Akoya’s overall model is sector-focused and leader-led: it invests only in sectors where it has directly relevant operating experience and uses Sector Leaders such as Regazzi to identify opportunities, evaluate companies, and provide post-close board-level guidance.
• For Professional Information Services, Akoya has publicly cited interest in SaaS, workflow solutions, compliance, data analytics/aggregation, legal/tax/regulatory, training/education/certification, healthcare and science services, digital publishing, and support services.
• Akoya’s current published criteria emphasize founder-, family-, or owner-operated businesses with $25M to $200M in revenue, at least $4M of EBITDA for platforms, North American headquarters, no distressed or turnaround situations, and management/owner willingness to remain involved and reinvest.
• Regazzi’s deal comments point to companies with strong niche positions, solid product suites, defensible customer bases, and room to improve go-to-market, engineering/product development, customer service, and geographic or product-line expansion.
• Akoya describes its approach as partnering with “world-class executives, well-positioned companies, and fully developed value creation strategies” to create value for management and investors.