Cirrus Media sells all but health and wealth titles as it pursues leaner publishing strategy
Cirrus Media has lost the title of Australia’s largest business to business publisher after selling off all but its healthcare and financial titles to Prime Creative Media.
The company, which was rebranded from Reed Business International two years ago after a takeover by private equity group Catalyst, has sold its industrial, mining, manufacturing and agricultural assets and associated events to the Melbourne based publisher.
The sale of the titles sees Cirrus complete a strategy first floated two years ago by management consultants to focus on its health and wealth titles and growing its event portfolio.
What about the architectural publications / websites? Did they get sold or are they still with Cirrus? (Infolink / Architecture and Design.)
Interesting that the demise of this once huge publisher has been met with a resounding meh………
How many times has private equity f*cked up media investments in this country?
Private equity should be banned from buying and selling off media in Australia. This is not capitalism, but more akin to the US robber barons in the 1890s. Look at what private equity has done to the once thriving Next Media just as one example. Nope, don’t care about market forces and all that free-wheeling profit crap- all private equity does is asset strip and destroy industries. They should be banned from buying anything bar other private equity firms where they can only destroy each other and good riddance for that!
@Not an Architect: Infolink/ A&D will be staying at Cirrus, as will the Franchise publication.
18 Staff…..That’s about 10 Print Mast heads, copious amounts of web sites…. A pretty lean beast…. Back in the day, they had about 100 staff working on the Mast heads and their online entities – and making well over 20 million in sales…
I wish the new owners well on acquiring such a Gem….
Good luck to them. They’re going to need it!
They’re left with the healthcare titles, which have always been the most profitable. Unfortunately just about all the previous healthcare journos & sales/marketing staff left or were made redundant after the Cirrus takeover. Institutional memory has gone and likewise most of the knowledge of and engagement with the audience. Cirrus is now really just a startup content marketing operation with some old mastheads.
Dear Lex,
Institution is about right…
There was very little engagement with the audience in Reeds time – it was all about selling ad space and cutting costs.
No real investment was made in any of the titles, no sizeable acquisitions and growth came about in spite of the Institutionalised management team.