Relx, the former Reed Elsevier, whose brands include the Lancet and LexisNexis, is the most intriguing in that list. The company’s description of itself contains at least five words to provoke a yawn – “a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers” – but the pre-Claude share price was a thing of wonder. It was £5 in 2012 and £41 in May last year, at which point Relx was worth £70bn-ish and was the fifth-largest company in the FTSE 100 index.