Business Week Sale: $1
The FT reports that:
“McGraw-Hill could reap just $1 from a sale of Business Week, according to people familiar with the 80-year-old financial magazine’s losses.
The publisher has appointed Evercore, the boutique investment bank, to sell the business after concluding it was non-core, two people familiar with the decision said. McGraw-Hill, which owns the Standard & Poor’s rating agency and a large educational publisher, would only say it was “exploring strategic options” for Business Week. Evercore did not return calls.
Auctioning a predominantly print business exposed to financial advertisers during a media recession will be challenging. According to the Publishers’ Information Bureau, Business Week’s advertising revenues fell by a third to $77.8m in the first half of 2009. The magazine says its circulation is 936,000.”
Perhaps I should bid $2 . . .
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Source:
Business Week sale may fetch only $1
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
FT, July 13 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bd68cdc6-6fdc-11de-b835-00144feabdc0.html
July 14th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Nice job building up a brand name for over 80 years. My roll of toilet paper is worth more than Business Week.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:30 am
So now advertisers will have to pay more to control BW content than the ownership.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:31 am
$2 if you just have it to waste…
July 14th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Don’t waste the buck. Have you looked at BW recently? Far too much of the content is devoted to specific contributors with whom I suspect you you can’t agree with. Funny that McGraw-Hill’s management thinks so much of its BW editorial staff that they’re willing to dump the business for a dollar. Maybe they can sell it at the 99cent store as a bargain.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Maybe they can turn it into a RAP MUSIC rag and rename it
“Bidnez Week”
July 14th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Or a Celebrity Business Sheet: ‘ Bigness Week.’
July 14th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Can you imagine what that mag would read like if Barry controlled editorial content? LOL!
You’d be the best read biz mag in America!
July 14th, 2009 at 10:21 am
BR,
U$D 2 would be a good move, I’d even send you the picture of Jefferson on E-Z, no-fee, Financing Terms..
MRegan, yesterday, made a good point ~BW’s archives are worth more than the current rag, going fwd:.
as well, the right 20% of their Mailing List could, even, make them worth U$D 2×2 ..
July 14th, 2009 at 10:23 am
I’m in for $20.00
July 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
BR quipped:
But what would you do with it?
On the other hand, that could really open the door to some mischief – imagine putting the “BusinessWeek cover curse” to work for you!
July 14th, 2009 at 10:37 am
$3
July 14th, 2009 at 10:40 am
@Transor Z
Is that “a three dollar bill” you’re offering, or just three dollars?
Maybe McGraw Hill could toss in some other assets and turn it into a happy meal
July 14th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Just think, you could have bought Citi Stock a few months ago at a buck…
Tripled your $$
Now you’d be rich enough to buy BW 3x over!
Kind makes one feel like Warren Buffett…
July 14th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I’d rather buy a drink instead.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:51 am
@Steve Barry, quite expensive toilet paper you got. But your behind probably deserves the best care.
Does the price include free subscription? Or is do I have to pay $25/year for it?
July 14th, 2009 at 11:02 am
“…Reed Phillips, managing partner of DeSilva & Phillips, the media-focused investment bank, said more likely buyers included financial groups such as OpenGate Capital, which bought TV Guide; Platinum Equity, the new owner of the San Diego Union Tribune; or Mansueto Ventures, publisher of Inc and FastCompany. Platinum would not comment and OpenGate and Mansueto did not return calls.
However, the $1 headline price for which OpenGate bought TV Guide “is probably the kind of deal that would be obtainable for Business Week”, Mr Phillips said.
“I think they’ll end up giving it away,” another banker said.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94cbe544-700c-11de-b835-00144feabdc0.html
http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=Business+Week
July 14th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Hoffer,
LOL! Just the thought that financial groups and private equity firms are scurrying into meetings and conference calls to determine if they should offer $1 or $2 of their precious capital.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Now if we could get Sam Zell to drop the sale of the Cubs to a buck, I’d be all over that!
July 14th, 2009 at 11:24 am
I’ve been busy cancelling nearly all of my print publication subscriptions in recent weeks. Now only have a few left – the local Star Tribune on Mon-Fri, although I may cancel that soon since it’s a shell of its former self and I rarely read it. I only get it out of a sense that I should at least try to keep up with the local news but I can do that on the Internet. I also get the NYTimes on Sundays but they’re also a shell of its former self and on thin ice with me. I also get S.I., but only because I’m somehow on auto renewal with them. Not sure how that happened but I may have to rectify that soon. Used to get The Economist and WSJ but I axed those when they tried charging me far more on renewal than I paid when I first signed on. Buh-bye.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:30 am
@BR
BR…you may have personally put them out of business with this blog…Shame on you!
July 14th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I wonder why they don’t just scale it back to online only and shut down the print addition-
many magazines have gone that route
July 14th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
You can change the name to Bailout Week and keep the BW masthead (of course the first cover story can be how you helped bail out McGraw Hill)
If bailouts ever end, you can rename it Barry’s Week
Think of the possibilities!
July 14th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I hereby nominate Barry as the next Rukeyser!
July 14th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I wonder what liabilities MHP is sending along with BW — without debt, there should be a way for it to become cash flow positive, so I don’t get the $1 price, much as I don’t like the business model.
Let Murdoch buy it — it would work well with his current stable of financial journalism companies. Let TSCM buy it to gain a non-web platform. (What a thought.) Let Forbes buy it, then they could have a business magazine.
At least a weekly that doesn’t rely on long lists…
The brand name is worth something — unless MHP is trying to shed some debts here along with BW, it should be worth something.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
@cvienne:
Dunno if my $3 bid was good since NY Stock Guy bid $20.
No way I’m going to $21. That’s seven bottles of Three-Buck Chuck at Trader Joe’s. Or three bottles of Yellow Tail — or half a bottle of Grey Goose…
July 14th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Or 21 pints of Cossack if that’s how you roll
July 14th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
The primary liability is likely to be subscriber copies owed to 800,000 plus subscribers. In theory, someone needs to serve them copies or pay them back for the unserved portion of their subscription.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:14 am
They’re selling the entire mag for less than the price of a single copy!
July 15th, 2009 at 7:17 am
BW obviously has their own unique problems but what does this say about the fate of struggling US newspapers that are about the size of comic books now without their many pages of RE and auto advt? Officially we’re only 19 months into a drecession that only Krugman believes will end by fall. Fall 09