Media In The City: Emap Auction Moves To Second Round
The big news in the City last week concerned Emap, with the company completing the first round of its break-up auction.
At the start of the week it was reported that Hearst, owner of the UK’s third largest magazine publisher The National Magazine Company, had made a £700 million indicative offer for Emap’s consumer magazine division (Full Story).
Emap recently sold its Australian magazines business to ACP Magazines – an equal partner with NatMags in ACP-NatMag – for £ 38 million.
Towards the end of the week it emerged that with the first round of Emap’s break-up auction complete, at least five bidders for each division had made it through to the next stage (Full Story).
Along with Hearst, four private equity firms were named as bidding for the company’s consumer mag division, whilst there was also strong competition for its radio and business-to-business divisions.
In other news, the European Commission opened an investigation into the proposed takeover of Reuters by Thomson, the Canadian financial information company.
The planned merger, worth approximately £8.7 billion, would see the combined business – named Thomson-Reuters – become the leading news and data provider for professional markets (Full Story).
Internet search giant Google acquired the Finnish social networking site Jaiku – which allows users to connect with friends through the internet or instant messenger as well their mobile – for an undisclosed amount.
Founders Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen said: “While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation.” (Full Story).
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