 Steven Swartz |
Hearst today announced it agreed to pay $2.8B cash to acquire the remaining 20 percent stake in Fitch Group (credit ratings, financial data) held by France’s Fimalac, holding company of French billionaire Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere.
Fitch, which competes in the ratings business with the larger Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, will become Hearst’s largest wholly-owned business.
Hearst made its initial Fitch investment in 2006 and increased the holdings to 80 percent in 2015.
CEO Steven Swartz is eager to grow Fitch’s ratings, solutions and learning services business. “Hearst and Fitch share a commitment to innovation and helping clients utilize information to make smarter decision,” he said in a statement.
Hearst publishes San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, Albany Times Union, Elle, Car and Driver, Harper’s Bazaar, owns 31 TV stations and investment stakes in ESPN, Buzzfeed and Vice.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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