Time sold to tech couple Benioffs for $190 mn
Salesforce.comfounder Marc Benioff gets a new role — that of a media baron
Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne agreed to acquire Time magazine from Meredith Corp. for $190 million in cash, joining Jeff Bezos among tech billionaires buying venerable print publications.
The move thrusts the brash 53-year-old entrepreneur, who helped lead the shift of software to an on-demand model, into a new role: media baron.
It’s a transaction reminiscent of Bezos’s $250 million acquisition of The Washington Post in 2013. That purchase brought Bezos a Pulitzer Prizewinning, 140-year-old newspaper but also put him in the cross hairs of President Donald Trump, who has called the Post an “expensive lobbyist” for Amazon.com.
Benioff, who has a net worth of $6.5 billion, serves as the cochief executive officer of Salesforce, but the deal is unrelated to the tech company, according to the statement. The Benioffs are buying the media brand personally. “We are honoured to be the caretakers of one of the world’s most important media companies and iconic brands,” the Benioffs said in a statement Sunday. “Time has always been a trusted reflection of the state of the world, and reminds us that business is one of the greatest platforms for change.” Meredith, known for publications such as Better Homes & Gardens, acquired Time as part of its $1.8 billion takeover of Time in January.
But it soon put some of the business’s biggest titles up for sale, including Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Time itself.
Meredith said on Sunday that deals for the other titles are expected in “the near future.” The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the Time deal, which is slated to close in the next 30 days. The Benioffs said they won’t be involved in day-today operations or journalistic decisions. They also plan to keep Time’s current leadership team in charge.
Benioff has tried to bolster his reputation as a civic leader, through personal philanthropy and corporate sponsorship of public projects in his native San Francisco. Benioff has criticised Trump in public appearances and through his Twitter account. And now the executive’s profile is bound to grow.