Hearst pays $182.4m for Primedia's Seventeen magazine

NEW YORK - US publishing giant Hearst, publisher of Good House Keeping and Cosmopolitan, has acquired young women's magazine Seventeen from Primedia for $182.4m.

The deal will see the long-established Seventeen sit alongside one of Hearst's most recent launches CosmoGirl! strengthening Hearst's position in the highly competitive young women's market.

As well as CosmoGirl!, it competes against Conde Nast's TeenVogue, G+J USA's YM and Time Inc's Teen People.

The acquisition comes after a long-running battle for the magazine that saw Hearst compete against French rival Hachette Filipacchi Media USA, which was said to have been advised by Jean-Marie Messier, the former head of Vivendi Universal.

However, the final price paid is a long way from the $500m (£313.7m) that Primedia was offered for the magazine in 1998 by Hearst rival Conde Nast, and still some way off of the $200m Primedia had thought it would get when the auction began last year.

Seventeen is one of the oldest magazines in the market, having been launched during the Second World War in 1944, and now has a reported readership of nearly 14m.

The magazine is the latest in a series of sell-offs for Primedia, which is focusing its business on niche, hobby and trade titles. Last year, Primedia sold off Modern Bride to Conde Nast and Chicago magazine to the Tribune Company, as part of its plan to offload its non-core assets to improve operations.

In 2001, Primedia bought Emap USA, publisher of titles such as Hot Rods and Guns & Ammo, for £365m almost half the £720m price Emap paid for it in 1998.

Cathleen Black, president of Hearst Magazines, said: "Given our success with CosmoGirl!, which has reached profitability in just over three years and has already expanded into eight countries, the Seventeen acquisition enhances our standing in the teen marketplace."

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