Asian businessmen now control the Capitalist Tool.
Forbes Media is selling a majority stake to a group of Asian investors known as Integrated Whale Media. The Forbes family, including Chairman and Editor-in-chief Steve Forbes, will continue to hold a minority stake in the 97-year-old publishing company.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but a source estimated the cash price at $215 million, primarily to buy out the sizable minority stake held by Elevation Partners.
The new ownership team is led by Hong Kong-based Integrated Asset Management, founded by Tak Cheung Yam. Another investor with a significant stake is Singapore businessman Wayne Hsieh, the co-founder of Asustek Computer.
“This is a major milestone for the company and our family and we’re pleased to partner with a forward looking investor group to further drive the evolution and growth of this exceptional company,” said Steve Forbes, who retain keep both his current titles.
Forbes magazine was founded by his grandfather B.C. Forbes in 1917. After the sale, the family’s stake will be reduced to around 20 percent.
Elevation, the investment group that includes Irish rocker Bono and Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee, will fully exit their investment in publishing company.
Elevation paid an estimated $265 million for 44 percent of the company in August 2006, but wrote down most of the investment when Forbes slipped into the red during the recession.
The company has since rebounded and said that 2013 was “the company’s most profitable year in the last six.”
Although some reports valued Forbes Media at $475 million, that was the “enterprise value” of the entire company, not the actual cash that was forked over by the Asian investors.
The sale process dragged on for eight months. In November, the company hired Deutsche Bank to shop it for around $400 million
But potential suitors ranging from Germany’s Axel Springer to Time Inc. were unwilling to pay that price. Fosun International, a diversified company that publishes the Chinese edition of Forbes, also dropped out of the bidding as did Singapore-based Spice Global.
Still, the betting from Day One was that the suitor would hail from Asia, where the “Capitalist Tool,” as Forbes is known, enjoys a higher profile than it does on the domestic front.
The Forbes family has sold a lot of its assets from its real-estate holdings to its unique collection of Faberge eggs. Earlier this year, it announced plans to move out of its current Greenwich Village headquarters to Jersey City. It sold its iconic headquarters townhouse five years ago to NYU but stayed on as a renter.
CEO Mike Perlis said there “will be no layoffs and no cutbacks” as a result of the ownership change.
“This is an investment move,” he said. “The reason it took as long as it did to do the deal was that we were looking for a particular kind of buyer who would understand the tradition of the Forbes brand and an investor would back the family’s and current management’s plan to grow the company.”