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Zero mag cull in VNU's buy up of ZD's Euro paper biz

Nightmare scenario might not be realised

At last. Dutch publisher VNU has finally got round to announcing it is buying Ziff Davis' European publishing business.

This means VNU gets the titles IT Week, PC Magazine, PC Direct and PC Gaming World in the UK. In Germany, the market where VNU really wants to make some headway as it's been fended off for about 15 years, it gets PC Professionell, PC Direkt and Internet Professionell.

From France, PC Expert, PC Direct and Yahoo! Internet Life will be joining the Dutch publishers.

Nightmare scenario: Might not actually be realised

In the UK VNU plans to keep IT Week, PC Magazine and PC Direct going. It's not sure about the games mag which doesn't really fit with what VNU does but UK MD Brin Bucknor muttered some management speak about reviewing this.

Significantly, they said there was no recruitment freeze - which implies they aren't expecting lots of redundancies - except the usual support staff casualties.

All this also means VNU's own titles aren't for the chop, so Computing and Network News continue alongside IT Week. Apparently advertisers see them all performing different tasks - enterprise focus v senior IT professionals market. If the ads boys can sell it, why shut anything down?

By the by, this is what Ziff's UK MD David Craver told staff, by email, after the Reg broke the news of the VNU deal.


David Craver
19/06/2000 13:44
>>

To: UK Users
cc:
Subject: Register story...

many of you will have seen the Register story. The story is incorrect (like a lot of the Register...). There will be no announcement re the sale today and probably not this week either....dc

What can we say - except the price of the deal is now talked of as being around £60 million. ®

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