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Saved from the brink
Court approves plan to revive halted investor title
It's official: Worth has found its savior.
The upscale personal finance magazine, which laid off its staff and suspended publication in April, is set to return this fall under a new owner, Curtco Robb Media, publisher of the Robb Report.
Curtco obtained approval for the acquisition yesterday from the judge presiding over Worth Media's bankruptcy proceeding. Worth's majority owner, W. Randall Jones, needed the bankruptcy proceeding to free the magazine from the control of his former partners, who own 10 percent of Worth Media.
Curtco has agreed to pay $2.4 million in cash for Worth -- roughly the total value of Worth's assets as declared in its bankruptcy filing -- and assume some of its $9.7 million in liabilities. An announcement of the deal is expected as early as this week.
Worth, which had a circulation of 500,000 at the time of its shutdown, figures into Curtco's plans to build a family of magazines around the Robb Report, a luxury guide for the ultra-rich. Robb Report readers have a median household income of $147,417, versus $122,490 for Worth.
Bill Gibbons, Robb Report's head of marketing, told Media Life earlier this year that Curtco intends to buy or launch companion publications about travel, boating and real estate. It has already launched one spinoff, Robb Report Home Entertainment & Design.
Worth had long struggled to stay afloat amid a massive downturn in financial advertising that claimed the lives of a number of its competitors, including Mutual Funds, Bloomberg Personal Finance, Individual Investor and Family Money.
The decision to shut down only came after Worth’s chief backer, Tesla Capital, told the company in March that it would no longer provide funding.
As of its final issue, Worth's ad pages were down 57.6 percent versus the same period in 2002, totaling 86.1.
For those personal finance magazines that have survived the slump, the outlook has recently been brightening. According to a report this week by Universal McCann forecaster Robert Coen, recent improvement in the stock market should lead to strong growth in financial services advertising in the next 18 months.
June 18, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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