Roy Disney’s Shamrock Capital Growth Fund has teamed up with Bain Capital Ventures to acquire the Publishing Group of America from Steve Rattner and Peter Ezersky’s Quadrangle Group.
Terms were not disclosed, but industry sources estimated the deal had a price tag of around $150 million.
Dick Porter, PGA’s CEO, said he expects to stay in the top job under the new ownership.
The company publishes the weekly American Profile, monthly food magazine, Relish and has plans to launch in September a health-themed monthly called Spry.
All three magazines are inserted into small-town newspapers.
American Profile is one of Quadrangle’s first investments. In 2001, it pumped $23 million into the magazine for a minority stake.
When the investment was made, the magazine had a circulation of just 3 million; today it is 9 million.
However, Relish will soon become the largest magazine in the fold once it increases its circulation next month to 12 million.
Spry is set to launch with a circulation of around 9 million.
PGA also publishes cookbooks under the Hometown Recipes name, runs the syndicated news service Hometown Content, which provides content for smaller daily and weekly newspapers and Web sites and has an integrated marketing company called Hometown Promotions.
“PGA is a pioneer and it can be a powerhouse,” said Robert Perille, managing director of Shamrock.
Unlike Life magazine, which crashed as a Time Warner property, American Profile never tried to compete with the big boys in the field, such as Parade, which is owned by the Newhouse empire, and Gannett’s USA Weekend.