Time magazine sold for $190M to Salesforce co-founder

WASHINGTON — Time magazine is being sold by Meredith Corp. to Marc Benioff, a co-founder of Salesforce, and his wife.

Meredith announced that it was selling Time magazine for $190 million in cash to Benioff, one of four co-founders of Salesforce, a cloud computing pioneer.

Meredith had completed the purchase of Time along with other publications of Time Inc. this year.

The Benioffs are purchasing Time personally, and the transaction is unrelated to Salesforce.com, where Benioff is chairman and co-CEO and cofounder. The announcement by Meredith said the Benioffs would not be involved in the dayto-day operations or journalistic decisions at Time. Those decisions will continue to be made by Time’s current executive leadership, the announcement said.

“We’re pleased to have found such passionate buyers in Marc and Lynne Benioff for the Time brand,” Meredith president and CEO Tom Harty said. “For over 90 years, Time has been at the forefront of the most significant events and impactful stories that shape our global conversation.”

Meredith, the publisher of such magazines as People and Better Homes & Gardens, had put four Time Inc. publications up for sale in March. Negotiations for the sale of the three other publications — Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated — are continuing.