The third largest U.S. business magazine, Forbes, is exploring the option of being sold. Forbes’ profits have fallen by 7.5 % in the past 9 months. To explore its selling options, the company hired Deutsche bank.
President and CEO of Forbes, Mike Perlis, sent a letter to the employees communicating them that the company is in fact exploring the option of being sold and that is move is “more than a few over the transom indications of interest”. This may have caused worry amongst employees since with a change of owner, often leads to changes in the organizational culture and even the employees that work for the company.
Forbes is not the only printed media company that is considering being sold. Major newspapers such as Boston Globe and the Washington Post, as well as several magazines have recently been sold. The main cause for this is that the print media industry in general has faced a severe downfall in demand due to increased popularity of online media. As a consequence, the amount of advertisement displayed in print media has decreased since some of the advertising companies rather promote their products in online media.
Article: http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/15/news/companies/forbes-sale/