Japanese owner puts Quartz up for sale

Online business news site Quartz has been put up for sale just over two years after it was acquired by a Japanese financial intelligence and media company, reports Lukas Alpert and Benjamin Mullin of The Wall Street Journal.

Alpert and Mullin report, “The company, Uzabase Inc., agreed to purchase Quartz in mid-2018 in a cash-and-stock deal that could have been worth as much as $110 million based on whether the site hit certain financial goals. Uzabase ultimately only paid about $86 million.

“The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has also pushed Uzabase to seek an exit from the business, some of the people said.

“Many digital-media companies have been working to cut costs and preserve capital, and the market for raising funds is tight, so it may prove challenging to find a buyer at an attractive price, one of the people said.”

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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.