BusinessWeek's potential buyers: Dow Jones and Bloomberg

Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org writes Monday that the potential buyers for BusinessWeek magazine include Bloomberg L.P. and News Corp./Dow Jones.

Ali also notes that the co-chairman of the investment bank hired to shop the business glossy has been on McGraw-Hill’s board since 1996.

Ali writes, “With this, speculation on the fate of BusinessWeek becomes slightly more clear, though there is no guarantee any deal would happen in this environment. And it certainly won’t be easy: according to some estimates the magazine lost about $20 million last year and may lose as much as $50 million this year, so a buyer would have to be willing to take on these liabilities.

“Some of the names of potential buyers that have been mentioned include Bloomberg and News Corp/Dow Jones. The key, according to Roland DeSilva, managing partner at media investment bank DeSilva & Phillips (and a former exec at MGH), who I spoke to last week on this, is that MGH would have to move beyond positioning it just against Fortune and Forbes, and look at the full digital spectrum of options covering business and finance.

“Valuation will be very difficult, and the buyer is going to have to determine of the future of the magazine, by making a judgement of the value of information BW delivers that makes it different and how they deliver it digitally, he said.”

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