‘PacMags in talks to buy ACP’
ACP Magazines’ parent company is in talks to sell it to PacMags owner Seven West Media, AFR.com.au is reporting this morning.
If the move – reportedly at an early stage – were to take place, it would potentially bring together Seven West’s Pacific Magazines with its larger rival ACP.
The combined magazine operation would dominate the sector and possibly raise competition issues.
Last week saw ACP fare particularly badly in the audited weekly and monthly magazine figures, while PacMags held up reasonably well.
ACP’s parent company Nine Entertainment Co is facing significant debt issues after a planned float was cancelled.
The AFR’s James Chessell and Nabila Ahmed report:
“Sources close to Seven West confirmed that director Ryan Stokes, commercial director Bruce McWilliam and the chief executive of its Pacific Magazines division, Nick Chan, met with Macquarie last week for what were described as “very, very preliminary” discussions.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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if this happens what would ever happen to “54 Park St” and that “hit” show of they had on Arena?
How would the grazia girls handle working with That’s Life magazine girls?
How would some of them cope with not being able to say ACP?
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That’s ludicrous, how could that possibly get through the ACCC? It would make more sense if ACP was sold off in pieces and Pac just took the best performing/strongest mastheads and dumped the rest.
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Hi Dorothy,
If indeed a deal got done, I suspect that’s exactly what would happen.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
… judging by last week’s ABC figures, ACP has a lot of underperformers; so in reality, who’d want them (if the group was to be split up and sold off.) If this was to happen, I reckon there’d be a lot of closures and a lot of people put out of work.
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Big news indeed here.
If the ACCC does not earmark this; there will be a significant media community backlash; led in part by agencies and big buying forces.
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It will be interesting to see if they want to split the print and digital side of the brands or where the mags current sites end up.
Nine MSN get some useful traffic and credibility from sites like Money Magazine being part of their finance section.
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Titles would have to be rationalized. Not a bad thing as we have had to many titles for to long
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Relax everyone, I’ve also started negotiations to buy ACP and am confident an agreement will be reached shortly. Ryan and Nick are way too slow off the mark on this one and I’m a long way with Macquarie already.
All I need do is agree a price. We’re currently haggling around the $6.50 mark – they want $6.65 but I can’t come at that, it’s more than two coffees even at CBD prices. I’m pretty firm at $6.30.
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PacMags buying ACP won’t wake the toothless tiger of ACCC. Magazines are a narrow medium by definition, but publishing is not. If that makes sense.
If there was no internet, or newspapers then perhaps (but still probably not). It is not ACCC that stops media mergers but rather the Media Ownership laws.
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why would the ACCC stop ACP and Pac if they decided to consolidate. Maybe 15 years ago when magazines were a strong medium it’d catch competition attention, but not now.
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What’s happening with ACP’s version of Elle?
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