Following rumours of the purchase yesterday (26 July), Danny Dartnaill, Neville Side and James Stephen, business restructuring partners at BDO, were appointed joint administrators of the business and completed a sale yesterday “immediately following their appointment” to THG, formerly known as The Hut Group.
Following the sale, the London newspaper will continue to trade under the City A.M. brand. BDO said all 41 employees have been transferred to the buyer, with their employment rights protected.
Dartnaill commented: “The impact of Covid and changing commuter habits, combined with reductions in traditional advertising revenues, significantly affected City A.M.’s business.
“The sale of the business to THG is a positive one. It provides the best outcome for creditors in the circumstances, as well as saving the jobs of all staff and preserving the City A.M. brand.”
Headquartered in Manchester, THG owns online retail sites Lookfantastic, Glossybox, Zavvi, and Coggles, as well as beauty and wellbeing brands including MyProtein, ESPA, and Illamasqua. It had sales of nearly £2.4bn last year.
The group is not just focused on e-commerce and last year it added printed magazines to complement its digital content offering. Its first print magazine was for MyProtein, with 100,000 copies being made available to customers.
City A.M. is published Monday to Thursday and printed by Iliffe Print in Cambridge. Its current circulation is 67,714.
The business had confirmed that it was up for sale, or looking for fresh investment, earlier this month. However at the time Printweek noted that the firm’s latest accounts included a ‘material uncertainty’ note.
According to its most recently-filed small company accounts, for calendar year 2021 and approved on December 23 2022, the business had £1.38m in bank loans and overdrafts and negative shareholders’ funds of £1.6m. Its turnover was not disclosed.
In its own story on the sale, City A.M. confirmed the deal was a pre-pack and also quoted both Muncaster and Torpe, who co-founded the business together in 2005.
Torpe, who is now retiring from the business upon the conclusion of the deal, said that while the title survived lockdown, it unfortunately “didn’t have the money to invest in digital and build on the strong progress we saw during the pandemic”.
He was pleased by the THG deal, as the company’s digital expertise “will be a great asset”.
The article also quoted THG founder and CEO Matthew Moulding, who said his business had been looking for a partner in the media space for some time but had “waited for the right time and the right opportunity” to make a digital step-change in ad tech capabilities for THG’s digital brand building and e-commerce platform Ingenuity.
He added City A.M. would bring THG added reach into “the most influential consumer and investment community in Europe”, which THG’s brands as well as clients of Ingenuity would now be able to access.
“City A.M. is one of London’s leading media platforms and we will ensure this remains the case with full editorial independence. This deal helps us reach a huge new audience, complements our successful content creation studios and digital media expertise.”
Expanding on his thoughts on LinkedIn yesterday, Moulding added: “The fact that most of Britain’s media is foreign owned can’t be ideal. Almost all the press have long abandoned their LSE listings. Even the Financial Times recently raised the white flag, left the LSE, and sold itself to the Japanese.
“So, while THG is mostly interested in building ad tech reach with City A.M., it has to be a good thing that one of the UK’s most influential business papers remains in UK ownership.
“There’s a clear gap in the UK business media, one that supports and appreciates UK business, and is keen to see the UK improve our global competitiveness. City A.M., THG, and our partners, will now step up further to fill this gap, loud and clear.”
