Time Inc. UK sale is near
THE
much-delayed sale of Time Inc. UKis close to being finalized, sources tell Media Ink.
The deal, which late last year — prior to TimeInc. being taken over by Meredith Corp. — was talked about as being in the $200 million range, has since dropped to about $167 million, according to one British publishing source.
Thebuyer is said to be Epiris, a London private equity firm headed by Alex Fortescue. The executive did not return several e-mails seeking comment.
The British publisher was still known as IPC back in 2001 when Time Warner agreed to buy it for $1.6 billion — and thereafter assigned it to its then wholly owned Time Inc. publishing subsidiary.
WhenTimeWarnerChairmanJeff Bewkes ultimately spun off the entire Time Inc. publishing arm in 2013, he stuck the new publicly traded unit with nearly $1.4 billion in debt — in large part to pay for the long-ago IPC deal.
Time Inc. did manage to reap some benefit when it sold the London real estate that housed the British publisher for around $600 million.
But five years after its spinoff and unable to go it alone — and you have to believe the IPC debt load had something to do with it — Time Inc. sold itself to Meredith last month in a $2.8 billion deal.
AMeredith spokeswoman said that the company continued to work on a deal for the UK unit but declined to divulge any specifics or the identify of a buyer.
Derek Jeter’s media venture, The Players’ Tribune, has apparently landed former Details editor-in-chief Dan Peres as its new editorial director.
At least that is what Peres’ LinkedIn profile said on Thursday. Peres ran the CondéNastmen’s fashion magfor 15 years until it was shut downin 2015.
Peres’ TPT gig might come as something of a surprise to Gary Hoenig, a former editor-in-chief of ESPN The Magazine, who has been editorial director of TPT since Jeter launched it in 2014.
At the time, Jeter was a retired Yankee All-Star shortstop. Cashing in on his mega-star power to launch a media venture seemed a sound idea for his post-playing days.
The 43-year-old future Hall of Famer has raised $58 million in venture capital backing.
His media venture could become a bit more hazardous with potential conflicts of interest nowthat he is the CEOandpart-owner of MLB’s Miami Marlins.
Calls to Hoenig and an e-mail to Peres were not immediately returned.
Could Jim Cramer’s news site TheStreet.com going into play?
Tronc Chairman Michael Ferro, who is divesting the company’s Los Angeles Times and San Diego UnionTribune for $500 million, is said to want to channel some of that money into digital expansion. financial finally be
Tronc had looked at TheStreet in the past, sources said, but Cramer’s 22-year-old operation was struggling at the time. TheStreet, in fact, was warned by Nasdaq in late 2016 that its stock could be delisted since its shares had traded below $1 for more than 30 days in a row.
In addition, the last time Tronc came kicking the tires, TheStreet still had a prohibitively expensive block of $55 million in preferred stock from Technology Crossover Partners onits books.
TCP in November 2017 converted its holdings to about $20 million in cash and 6 million shares of common stock, removing that big hurdle to any potential takeover.
“On the heels of announcing a majority investment in BestReviews.com, the Tronc execs are actively eyeing one highprofile business site and looking at several other potential buys,” said Ken Doctor in his influential newsletter, Newsonomics. He declined to name the business site — but others were quick to point to TheStreet as the potential target.
On Thursday, TheStreet’s shares closed at $1.41 a share, down 2 cents. That left the company with a market capitalization of just under $70 million.
Executives at TheStreet could not be reached for comment. Tronc did not return an e-mail by press time. The LinkedIn feud between Meredith and Time Inc. over the disappearance of the Time Inc. logo from some bios of alums of the publishing company has apparently been resolved. The Time Inc. logo will soon reappear on those persons’ bios, Media Ink has learned. Longtime Time Inc. staffers who worked for the publisher before it was sold to Meredith were infuriated to find that the classic blue Time Inc. logo that had appeared for years next to their job descriptions had been wiped out and replaced with the atomized pastel-colored Meredith logo after the Des Moines company bought Time Inc. Each company had pointed to the other as the culprit. Well, for 7,000 ex-employees, the logo will return.