Business

Billboard buying group changes

Lachlan Murdoch has dropped out of an investment group looking to buy The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and other titles from Nielsen Business Media and has been replaced by a team that includes former Bear Stearns boss Alan Schwartz.

Schwartz and the firm at which he works, Guggenheim Investment Advisors, are said to have taken a lead role among the buyers, while earlier members, including Matthew Doull, step-nephew of Conrad Black, Jimmy Finkelstein, George Green and Pluribus Capital Management are believed to have a minority role.

“The deal is done,” said one source close to the situation, adding that the deal, estimated to be worth $70 million, is getting hung up as lawyers haggle over minor language before an announcement is made, perhaps by the end of the week. Guggenheim officials did not return a call by presstime.

Officials at investment banking firm Quayle Munro, which is representing Nielsen Business, did not return a call for comment. Murdoch, the eldest son of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, was publisher of The Post until 2005, and currently serves as a News Corp. director. (News Corp. owns The Post.)

He has been busy running Illyria, a private investment company based in Australia, which recently bought a 50 percent stake in a chain of FM radio stations there.

Like many magazine owners, Nielsen Business Media, which in addition to Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter also publishes AdWeek, has struggled with declining ad sales and stiff competition from Internet sites covering media.

Nielsen, which was once owned by a Netherlands-based VNU and is now controlled by five financial partners, quietly shopped the US based trade titles for the better part of six months.