Bloomberg reports that McGraw-Hill has hired boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc to sell the title, which along with rivals Time and Fortune is struggling.
The weekly US based title was founded in 1929 and claims 4.8m readers across 140 countries.
The magazine underwent a redesign in 2007 under editor-in-chief Stephen Adler in an attempt to attract more advertisers.
Last year the number of ad pages fell 16% and in the first quarter of this year this increased to a drop of 38%.
BusinessWeek is reported to have lost money for two years and is on course to lose more than $20m this year as the advertising market continues to shrink.
The title's competition has also been hit, with the print edition of Conde Nast's Portfolio axed in April this year. However, Fortune, Time and The Economist suffered less in the advertising decline, dropping 26.3% and 18.8% respectively.
The BusinessWeek website relaunched in June this year -- less than two years after the previous redesign -- with changes to the navigation and the added use of video, as well as offering an e-paper version to subscribers.
In 2008 the title launched social networking site, Business Exchange, aimed at UK bloggers.
The UK accounts for around one in three BusinessWeek European users, with the UK number one in terms of generating traffic on the site.
McGraw-Hill has declined comment on the sale.
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