Thursday, June 29, 2006

Wilmington and Metal Bulletin Merge

Nobody seems very surprised that these two mid size business media companies are merging. The combined entity http://http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/06/27/cnmetal27.xml will according to the Telegraph make a £330m turnover business.

What this deal illustrates is the growing pressure on business media companies as their traditional ad revenues decline. In the absence of any creativity in their thinking these two businesses have concluded that the answer to the new world is to bigger not cleverer. I think they are wrong. Outside of a cost synergies and the creation of a conbined cash and balance sheet resource their is little or no logic to the merger. Wilmington CEO Charles Bradyhttp://http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=633326051 has a good track record of running a good business. In his new role as CEO of the merged entity he will have to discover vision if there is to be nay long term value creation out of this deal.

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