Keith Kelly of The New York Post is reporting Friday that Joe Mansueto, who already owns Inc. and Fast Company, is apparently the leading bidder to acquire struggling business magazine Business 2.0 from Time Inc.
Kelly wrote, “It is not clear exactly what Mansueto would do with the magazine, although the deal would include a subscriber list of nearly 600,000 names, the brand and Web properties. It is also not clear what would happen to longtime editor Josh Quittner and his San Francisco-based staff.
“Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer is said to be interested in poaching some of Business 2.0’s staffers as he girds for battle with Joanne Lipman‘s Portfolio magazine.
“Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations with Mansueto, it now appears that the October issue of Business 2.0 will be the last one published under the Time Inc. name.
“The magazine, which began publishing in 1998, had reached break-even in 2005 but started to slide into the red after that.”
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