Bloomberg, Nikkei might be interested in Quartz

Ken Doctor writes for Politico Media about who might be interested in buying business news site Quartz from Atlantic Media and pegs its value at $100 million.

Doctor writes, “Of course, value – especially in these days of high-flying valuations, now newly tempered by the thinking that a top may have been reached in appraisals — is in the eye of the beholder. If Axel Springer ‘overpaid’ for Business Insider, it did so in the belief that it was buying a new pillar of the future.

“While it seems a stretch for Springer to add Quartz to its holdings, it’s not an impossibility, given its lower-than-BI price.

“Among the other suitors we’d have to consider:

“Bloomberg: Two and a half years ago, Bloomberg hired the leader who had grown Atlantic Media generally and greenlighted Quartz, Justin Smith. The Bloomberg Media CEO has rocked and rolled with the realities of the Bloomberg empire in that time, and he’s just hired Atlantic Media vet Scott Havens to be his global head of digital media. It’s hard to imagine a more congenial home for Quartz, given that lineage. The big question: Does Michael Bloomberg have the appetite for another consumer business? Then, the inevitable one for any big business news company buyer: keep Quartz separate or integrate it?

“Nikkei: In buying the FT, it has picked up a formidable old media brand, and one that has mastered the digital transformation better than any other news company. Yet, it’s a very specialized brand, built on wringing high prices from a relatively small (by digital standards) group of readers. Might a Quartz buy provide a big free footprint in the market, and offer lots of new ways to mix and match content and business models?”

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