Dennis acquires Kiplinger
Dynamic media company expands its US portfolio with acquisition of market-leading financial publishing business
Dennis Publishing, today announces that it has acquired Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. (Kiplinger), a market leader in business and personal finance information, in print and online.
Kiplinger, founded in 1920 in Washington, D.C. and run by three generations of the Kiplinger family, publishes the largest paid-subscription publications in several financial fields:
business forecasting (the weekly Kiplinger Letter); taxes (the biweekly Kiplinger Tax Letter); retirement living (the monthly Kiplinger’s Retirement Report) and yield-oriented investing (the monthly Kiplinger’s Investing for Income).
Its most widely read products are Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, the 600,000-circulation monthly magazine which pioneered personal finance journalism in 1947, and Kiplinger.com, its website with four million unique visitors and more than 30 million page views per month.
James Tye, Group CEO of Dennis, said: “Kiplinger is everything we look for in a business: It is blessed with strong brands that have developed a high degree of trust with their readers, allied to a vibrant, growing digital business.
Kiplinger is run by an experienced leadership team that understand the value of authoritative and concise information in the finance category as well as the key role the various Kiplinger brands play in delivering excellent results for its advertising clients.”
Dennis currently owns The Week based in New York, which boasts over 550,000 paid-for print subscribers and 5.8 million monthly unique users to its award-winning current affairs website TheWeek.com. The Week is renowned for both its concise style and the unique balance it brings to an increasingly fragmented and divided news landscape. Dennis was acquired by one of the UK’s leading Private Equity firms, Exponent, in October 2018. Washington-based Kiplinger is the first acquisition that Dennis has made in the US since it changed ownership.
Tye continued: “Kiplinger is a great fit for Dennis. It expands our presence into the finance category, an area we already have an impressive footprint in with the The Week and MoneyWeek. It is also a business with strong, recurring, subscription revenues; Dennis stands out as a company that is built around brands that readers trust and want to buy. I look forward to working with Denise Elliott and her talented team to keep growing the relevance, reach and revenues of the Kiplinger business.”
Denise Elliott, Senior VP and Chief Operating Officer at Kiplinger, will step up to run Kiplinger as CEO from the company’s Washington DC headquarters and will become part of the Dennis Leadership Team.
Jack Griffin, Chairman of Dennis, said: “Dennis has deep expertise in developing and growing well-loved media brands, both in print and online. We see a significant opportunity to continue to grow our business through expanding our reach and reputation globally. The Kiplinger acquisition marks the beginning of our focus on expansion through launch and acquisition in the US, one of the largest and most exciting media markets in the world.”
Knight Kiplinger, 71, will remain Chairman of KWE’s former parent, Outlook, Inc., and will serve as an informal advisor to Kiplinger and Dennis on editorial content, with the title of Editor Emeritus. None of Outlook’s substantial real estate holdings in Maryland and Martin County, Fla., are part of the transaction, and will continue to be owned and managed by the Kiplinger family.
Knight Kiplinger, formerly Kiplinger’s Chairman and Editor in Chief, said “Dennis will be an excellent custodian of not just the Kiplinger business, but of our editorial integrity and focus on strong reader service.”
Kiplinger was represented in the transaction by Berkery Noyes & Co in New York, and assisted by the Washington law office of Venable. Dennis was legally represented by Travers Smith in London and Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston, and assisted by Oaklins DeSilva & Phillips in New York.
