Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 10/14/2009 10:49:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Bloomberg is taking another step from the trading floor into the corner office.
The company said Tuesday that it was the winning bidder for BusinessWeek, the troubled 80-year-old title that McGraw-Hill had put on sale this summer.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the price was said to be near $5 million, plus assumption of liabilities, which were $31.9 million as of April.
The magazine will continue to be a weekly print publication, rechristened Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Decisions have not been made about BusinessWeek’s staff of more than 400 people; Bloomberg will select which of those employees it wants by the end of the year, when the deal closes. Those not selected will receive severance from McGraw-Hill, said a BusinessWeek executive.
The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
BusinessWeek was in a tough spot financially, and lost more than $800,000 dollars a week last year. Investors had pressured McGraw-Hill to get it off its books. While there was interest from parties in the private equity world, Bloomberg was seen as the preferred buyer.
“We are committed to the partnership,” said BusinessWeek president Keith Fox in an interview. “Bloomberg is acquiring a really powerful brand with strong reach among business professionals.”
Faced with slowing sales of its financial data terminals during the recession that have since improved, Bloomberg had been looking to expand its presence in consumer media. Clients for Bloomberg’s terminals are largely financial professionals, and the purchase of BusinessWeek, with its consumer and executive readers, gives the media company more access to the corporate offices as well.
With its gigantic newsroom of about 2,200 people and its aggressive reporting, Bloomberg has won a growing number of awards, but it is frustrated by its lack of cachet in the journalism world.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Good move. Bloomberg has the deep pockets to rebrand this magazine. I don’t know what he sees in owning a business magazine other than another outlet for his news group. His money though.
when was the last time you read Business Week or had anybody quote Business Week? And who wants week old market news anyway.
My only take is it is cheaper to buy Business week than create a Bloombery Business magazine from scratch. I assume he got it cheap. He is in the business news business, maybe he can change the format to deeper analysis of business trends rather than the drive-by paragraphs that dominate the genre. Don’t really know, but the guy has bucks, so I assume he knows what he’s doing.
They bought a customer list. That’s about it.
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