Keach Hagey of The Wall Street Journal spoke with Hearst CEO Steve Swartz, a former Journal editor and CEO of SmartMoney, about the company’s expansion plans.
Here is an excerpt:
WSJ: And yet your biggest investment of the past year was in financial information and data, with your taking a bigger stake in Fitch. Why?
Mr. Swartz: Taken as a whole, business information is now the second-largest business of the Hearst Corp., in terms of profits, behind the cable television networks. Whether we are talking about financial-services information, our health-care businesses, or our automotive-information businesses, they all produce data and analytics and services that are used in the day-to-day business of the customers, and that’s an area that we very much believe in. We will expand in financial services, we’ll expand in health care, we’ll expand in automotive related businesses and frankly, we are looking for a fourth and or fifth area of business information to be involved with.
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