Magazines. Either side of this weekend, the deadlines will come and go for the final round in the auctions of Time, Money, Sports Illustrated and Fortune in the US; and the Dennis Publishing company, mainly in the UK. Meredith, which is getting stuck into the rest of the former Time Inc portfolio with stories of even more cost savings and new revenues on the food-drink-home brands, is selling Time, Fortune and Money through Citi, and Sports Illustrated through Houlihan Lokey. Meanwhile, in London, Livingstone is auctioning the tech-smart Dennis, which some would-be buyers have viewed as potentially three separate businesses: The Week (in the UK and US), Buy-a-Car (a fast-growing UK online auto retailer), and a slew of auto and tech magazines. The race for Dennis has thinned since some private equity firms realised that, among other things: the 200k circulation of pioneering The Week is now propped up by 50k free copies in the UK; some of the once-mighty tech magazines will have to close; and that – for all its undoubted success – selling cars online is a relatively low margin and highly-competitive business. There is a key difference in the sale processes of the Time Inc and Dennis magazines. Meredith will sell its legendary brands to the highest bidder and hope for some trophy prices. But Felix Dennis’s legacy company is being sold not by a business but by the late publisher-poet-philanthropist’s amazing Heart of England Forest charity. The charity trustees may, therefore, decide to take some account of buyers’ plans for what has been one of the UK’s brightest media companies. That may just favour Burda whose combination of Dennis and its own Immediate Media would produce not only the UK’s second largest magazine-media group but also a very welcoming home for the people who helped Felix Dennis make his publishing fortune. That, at any rate, might become the tie-breaker if the offers from private equity firms and Burda are close. It’s getting hotter in New York and London.
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Final round in US-UK magazines sell-off
