There may be a sleeper in the hunt for Elle, Woman’s Day and other magazines that Paris-based Lagardére Group is auctioning off to the highest bidder as it divests all of its magazines outside of France.
This week, a rumor that Meredith Corp. — owner of Better Homes & Gardens, Family Circle, Parenting and Fitness — is in the hunt was making the rounds of the few executives working in the blizzard-ravaged Northeast.
For weeks, Hearst Corp., the US newspaper and magazine powerhouse, and Hamburg, Germany-based Bauer, which owns In Touch and Woman’s World here, have been mentioned as the two primary contenders.
The deal is being hatched out of Paris. The European holiday break generally stretches from Christmas Eve until the Feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 6. Only then will Europeans return to their work stations.
Even though bids were due in last week, nobody is expecting much to happen regarding the announcement of a winner until sometime in mid- to late January.
The price tag is expected to be well north of the $700 million-plus range. It could even come close to $1 billion under a best case scenario for the French.
Hearst and Bauer are privately held. Meredith, however, is publicly traded and would have to make sure a deal flies with its shareholders.
In recent talks, Meredith CEO Steve Lacy has not ruled out making acquisitions if the right deal comes along but has not hinted that he could be cooking up a big blockbuster deal.
Reached yesterday, a Meredith spokesman said, “As per our long-standing policy on items like this, I have no comment.”
Meredith’s corporate debt is down to $285 million and its stock has been outperforming most other media stocks lately. It closed yesterday at $35.02, down 18 cents.
On the one hand, a deal that piles on debt would probably rattle analysts who follow the company.
On the other, it would give the company that owns middle-market TV stations and magazine titles that are heavily oriented around hearth and home a major new outlet in the fashion world.
Either way, one thing is clear: straight financial players are steering clear of this one, leaving it to only a handful of strategic investors who could cut costs by combining the magazines with their other operations.
Lagardére wants to sell the entire operation to one buyer, although several sources said it might be able to command a bigger price by divvying up the women’s and men’s magazines.
“There’s a line of people who would love to get their hands on the auto books,” said one source, referring to Jumpstart.com, Road & Track and Car and Driver.
That would apparently include Jonas Bonnier, the head of the Bonnier Publications group of special-interest publishing properties, which has already purchased a number of magazines from Hachette in the US and would seem to be a good home for Hachette titles like Car and Driver and Road & Track.
Roitfeld rumors
There are rumors but still no official word on the new editor of French Vogue after Carine Roitfeld surprised the international fashion world on Dec. 17 by announcing her resignation, which some fashionista blogs say was really a firing.
That could be one reason why Condé Nast International President Jonathan Newhouse did not have a successor waiting in the wings.
Newhouse, like his first cousin S.I. Newhouse Jr., who is the chairman of the much larger US-based Condé Nast and its parent company, Advance Publications, is taking a leisurely year-end vacation.
The rumor mill, which was fanned by postings on fashion sites such as Racked.com and Ethicalstyle.com, said the source of discontent may have been festering for months because Roitfeld was keeping a number of high-end clients in the fashion world and Jonathan Newhouse felt this was a clear conflict for the editor of an influential fashion magazine.
According to Racked.com, the arrangement smacked of a pay-to-play deal. It may have first spilled out into the open in March when the Balenciaga design house banned Roitfeld and French Vogue from reviewing its fashion line. The report that Roitfeld was banned first appeared in Women’s Wear Daily.
Nobody was commenting on any of the behind-the-scenes rumbling this week. We attempted to reach Roitfeld via Face book, but she did not re spond by press time. She appears to use Twitter on an infre quent basis and recent tweets offer no hint of a clash with Jonathan Newhouse.
A Condé Nast spokes man said that the company was not going beyond the initial statement it released surrounding Roitfeld’s departure. At the time, it said that a new editor-in-chief would be named “sometime in January.” kkelly@nypost.com