Goldman, Sachs & Co. shot down reports that it had earmarked $1 billion for magazine investments with a statement Wednesday that it "has no plans to launch a separate investment vehicle around publishing.
More than a few believed Goldman's magazine gambit, as it was originally reported, could serve as a catalyst to break a longstanding impasse between buyers and sellers. That impasse so curtailed M&A activity last year, that according to media bank Whitestone Communications, Inc., the value of deals in publishing, information and training fields fell 91% to $14 billion.
Whitestone founder Baran Rosen reports that Goldman's actual intentions notwithstanding, a turnaround in magazine M&A activity may already be under way. "In the last six weeks," he said, "we've gotten more calls from venture funds looking for deals than we got in our first six years."
Rosen attributed much of this interest to pent-up demand. "The job of these venture funds is to invest capital," he said, "but none of them did any of that after 9/11. So now they're stacked up."
This is an excerpt from an article by Richard Morgan for The Daily Deal; February 21, 2002
