Economist Divests CFO Publishing
PE firm Seguin Partners is backing the newly independent company
January 12, 2010
Woburn, Mass.-based private-equity firm Seguin Partners acquired CFO Publishing in a deal that will see its former owner, The Economist Group, maintain "a substantial" minority stake in the new business. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The transaction comes as the business-to-business publishing space continues to re-align. In December, Neilsen Co. sold a basket of media-related publications, including Adweek, Mediaweek, The Hollywood Reporter and others, to an investor group made up of Guggenheim Partners and Pluribus Capital Management. At the same time, Neilsen shuttered other publications, including Editor & Publisher.
For the Economist Group, which is partially owned by Pearson, the sale seems to signal a shift in focus. The company acquired Congressional Quarterly from The Times Publishing Co. last year. However, management had been trimming costs around the CFO franchise for the past 12 months. Last year, CFO Europe, CFO Asia and CFO China were all closed due to the lackluster advertising markets.
Frank Quigley, who oversaw the CFO business at the Economist Group, told Mergers & Acquisitions that the unit overall has shown strong profits, despite the advertising downturn, driven primarily by the division's core magazine and conference business. He added that Seguin represented a good fit for the company.
Seguin, meanwhile, was launched a little more than four years ago by Martin Madden and Christopher Needham, who came from merchant bank Bariston Partners. The pair has some history in the publishing space, having previously backed Commonwealth Business Media, a former Primedia division. As part of its growth strategy, Commonwealth acquired another former Economist title, The Journal of Commerce, in addition to other add-ons. The exit came in July 2006, through a sale to the U.K.'s United Business Media.
Alan Glass, an operating partner at Seguin who served as CEO of Commonwealth, will assume the post of chairman of the independent CFO Publishing. Quigley, meanwhile, was named president and CEO.
(Quigley, before joining the Economist Group, formerly worked at SourceMedia, where he oversaw several publications as president of the securities group, including Mergers & Acquisitions and IDD.)
The Jordan, Edmiston Group advised the Economist Group on the sale.
A call to Seguin was not immediately returned by press time.
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