Richard Desmond prepares to sell his OK! magazine
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 | DIVISION SALE
Richard Desmond is readying to sell his portfolio of celebrity magazines, including Star, OK! and New!.
It has been reported that Desmond, chairman of Northern & Shell, has brought in Barclays Capital to manage the sale process for the company’s magazine division. A formal sale process has not yet commenced.
It has been speculated that the sale of the magazines would provide more funding for Channel 5 - a recent addition to Desmond’s portfolio. The TV channel changed hands in 2010 for £103.5 million.
About six million copies of OK! are sold each week to readers across the globe, with £20 million received from sales of the magazine in Britain last year.
German publishers Bauer Media, owner of Grazia and FHM, and Hubert Burda, which publishes Love it!, could be attracted by the sale. Both of these companies are currently in the race to acquire magazine titles being offloaded by BBC Worldwide, including the Radio Times.
Circulation of OK! fell by 23 per cent for the last six months of 2010, while sales for its rival Hello! proved to be stronger and fell by only 0.8 per cent for the same period.
OK! bought the exclusive rights to report on the weddings of David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Katie Price, as well as the life stories of Big Brother contestants.
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