Media company Emap has sold it’s business-to-business division to Guardian Media Group and private equity firm Apax for £1bn, this appears to be the final nail in the Emap coffin after the sale of its magazine and radio divisions to german publishers Bauer for a joint price of £1.14bn.
Earlier in December Emap looked unlikely to sell its business-to-business division, as they believed the offers were too low but GMG and Apax recently returned with the offer of £1bn. The chairman of Emap Alun Cathcart felt sadness seeing the end of 60 years of Emap as a publishing company but considers the investors their top priority. "Our job is to look after shareholder value. We now have an offer that is substantially better than the one we had two weeks ago."
It is believed that GMG and Apax will run the newly acquired division as one company together.
GMG's chief executive, Carolyn McCall, said the deal helped meet the commitments of its owner, the Scott Trust, formed in 1936 to safeguard the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian.
It’s been interesting to see this development over time as I was assigned to research Emap at the beginning of the semester and now the company effectively no longer exists, it seems that this has been set in motion in the absence of Chief Executive Tom Moloney who resigned last May however it is believed that this has happened due to the advertising markets moving from print and radio to the web, a true example of how broadcasting is rapidly changing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/22/emap.emapbusiness?gusrc=rss&feed=media
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1 comment:
Great well followed up Ved. Interesting times huh?
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