Forbes hires investment bank to explore sale

Business magazine Forbes has tapped the investment bank Citigroup to explore a sale after a previous deal to go public fell through, reports Benjamin Mullin and Lauren Hirsch of The New York Times.

Mullin and Hirsch report, “In recent weeks, an offering document describing Forbes’s financials compiled by Citi has been circulated to companies in the media sector, including Yahoo, said three of the people, who would speak only anonymously because the outreach was private. According to the document, Forbes generated more than $200 million in revenue and more than $40 million in profit in 2021, two of the people said.

“The people said that Forbes was exploring a sale at a price of at least the $630 million valuation that it declared when it moved to go public through the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC — though it cannot be assured it will get that price. Forbes scrapped that plan this year.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.