Hearst Corporation, owner of the Hearst Magazines publishing house, has just finalized a deal to buy 102 magazine titles from the French media group Legardère.
Hearst Corporation will pay €651 million ($895 million U.S.) for 102 titles, which will greatly increase the New York-based media conglomerate’s presence in the international fashion magazine industry. Negotiations have been under way since December 31st and the sale is expected to be finalised later this year, as Legardère’s interests span 15 countries.
Those interests include Hachette Filipacchi, a name that may be familiar to automobile and motorcycle enthusiasts, as it is the current publisher of Car and Driver, Road & Track and Cycle World magazines.
Hearst Magazines, which already owns well-known titles like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Popular Mechanics and Seventeen among several others, will also be adding the above mentioned motorsports publications to its portfolio.
This could have a positive impact on the motorcycle magazine, which has seen a dramatic decrease in advertising revenue recently. Hearst CEO Frank A. Bennack Jr. has expressed his confidence in print media, saying during an interview at the Internet Advertising Bureau’s MIXX conference last September that he believes it will be around “as long as the eye can see.”
