Media

Texas investor scoops up Maxim

Alpha Media has finally found a buyer for its beleaguered Maxim magazine — Texas investor Sardar Biglari.

Terms were not disclosed but sources said San Antonio-based Biglari Holdings paid between $10 million and $15 million.

The laddie magazine lost an estimated $7 million last year on revenue of about $35 million, sources said.

The 36-year-old Biglari fashions himself as a Warren Buffett-like accumulator of assets, and Maxim is the first publishing asset he owns — joining Steak N Shake and Western Sizzlin, two restaurant chains, and some real estate assets.

Biglari said Maxim will continue to be based in New York and be run by the same management team.

“As the new owner, we look forward enthusiastically to making long-term investments in pursuit of revitalizing the Maxim brand,” Biglari said in a statement. “Maxim’s inclusion into our collection of companies will benefit from our financial strength. We plan to build the business on multiple dimensions, thereby energizing our readership and viewership.”

Earlier attempts by Alpha to sell Maxim fizzled under the weight of legal issues.

The most recent effort, a deal to sell the entire company to Darden Media Group, owned by Calvin Darden Sr., a wealthy Atlanta businessman, fell apart when Darden had trouble coming up with the $28 million purchase price.

Then, in a bizarre twist, convicted stock scammer Calvin Darden Jr., the son of Darden Sr., was arrested and charged with fraud on Feb. 14 by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara in connection with the aborted sale.

Darden Jr., 39, held himself out as his dad while e-mailing and calling prospective lenders — who lent him more than $8 million for the Maxim acquisition, Bharara charged.

Bharara earlier had charged Darden Jr. with a fraud involving a Taiwan investor who was told the younger Darden was the point man in bringing the New York Knicks to Taiwan for an exhibition game.

The Knicks and the NBA said no such action was contemplated.

The case became more complicated when Alpha last week sued Darden Media for $28 million, claiming the father and son team had together agreed to buy the magazine — but reneged on the deal.

But even as it filed the legal papers, it pursued other buyers.

For a while it appeared that Infinity Partners and Hilco Global, which together own licensing rights to Miss America, were gong to pick up Maxim for about $20 million.

But those talks collapsed as well.

Maxm and several other properties published by Alpha had originally been taken over in 2007 by Quadrangle, headed by Steve Rattner and Peter Ezersky. But when the Great Recession hit, they were not able to service their debt and two years later ended up defaulting to lenders, headed by private equity firm Cerberus.

Cerberus ran it far longer than anyone had anticipated — until last March when it put it on the block.

Most media companies were leery of spending real money and had submitted bids ranging from zero and a cut of the profits to $10 million — a tiny sliver of the $250 million price it commanded in 2007 when it was sold by British entrepreneur Felix Dennis.

Dennis had brought the title to the US in the mid-1990s from the UK.