Australia OKs Bauer Media’s Takeover Of Pacific Magazines

The merger of Australia’s two biggest magazine publishers will be completed within two weeks after the competition regulator decided it would not oppose the AU$40 million (US$24.3 million) deal.

Bauer Media, publisher of Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day, will go ahead with its takeover of Seven West Media’s Pacific Magazines, owner of New Idea and WHO, after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) decided the deal would not substantially lessen competition and was in the best interests of the industry.

ACCC chair Rod Sims conceded that while there was “notable” competition between the magazine titles owned by the German-owned publisher and Seven, closures were inevitable regardless and the deal would not affect the quality or pricing of rival publications.

“When we went down every rabbit burrow, we found that it changed our view and so we’ve come out and cleared it,” Mr. Sims told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “Woman’s Day and New Idea on the one hand, and Take 5 and That’s Life! are each other’s closest competitors. But…firstly, there are a lot of people that buy both magazines, so we convinced ourselves that it was unlikely that they would close one of them. In terms of investment, they had already cut back a fair bit and our judgement is the consumers won’t suffer much more of a decline in quality than they otherwise would.”

Full Content: Brisbane Times

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