Businessman looking for a good deal

Business Press, publisher of Businessman Magazine monthly, is looking for a strategic investor, a company official said. Ewa Piechna-Pietrzyk, director general of Business Press, said the firm is in the preliminary stage of talks but hasn't yet picked a potential investor. "We're in early talks with potential partners," Piechna-Pietrzyk said. "I'm talking about both media companies and financial investors, emphasizing the media players though, who would provide know-how and experience to operations we would like to develop." Business Press would like to invest in corporate publications and develop marketing activities using company titles, Piechna-Pietrzyk added. But given the present economic malaise, it could be difficult to find a buyer, market sources said.

Looking for a buyer Business Press has been trying to sell Businessman for several years now, offering the magazine to all German publishers on the Polish market, according to an industry source who asked not to be named. The company may be eying Agora as a potential buyer, the source said. Despite a slump in the ad market, Agora, the publisher of daily Gazeta Wyborcza, is moving ahead with investment plans. In April the publisher closed a zł. 72.7 million ($18.18 million) transaction with Prószyński i S-ka, publisher of several magazines that account for 4% of the magazine ad market. But Jolanta Bażyńska, director of investor relations at Agora, said her company is not interested in Businessman. Oliver Voigt, CEO of Gruner+Jahr (G+J), a Germany-based publisher of leading women's magazine Claudia, said it's not the right time to invest in economic magazines. "We're not interested (in Businessman)," he said. "Under the current economic situation I still don't see any room for an economic magazine, even for a reasonable price." Last year G+J planned to launch Capital, a business monthly, but it cancelled its plans due to slumping ad market sales. At that time, Voigt said that Capital, with sales at 40,000, would not have made sense. Readership of business newspapers is also questionable. Market research conducted last year for the daily Rzeczpospolita by PBS, a market research company, last year indicated that only 2% of respondents read business press. While Businessman was Poland's first, and at one time only, economic monthly, competitors have joined the fray. In April 2001, German publisher Axel Springer launched Profit, a business monthly that weakened Businessman's position on the market.