ACP Media buys Property Press stable

Friday 23rd November 2001

The Liberty Press Group confirmed today its classified advertising stable encompassing l5 titles with combined weekly circulations of more than 700,000 in the property and motor vehicle markets has been sold to New Zealand's largest magazine publisher, ACP Media Ltd.

The surprise move will further establish ACP as a major player in the classified publishing business as it adds the titles Property Press, Motor Buyers' Guide and Motor Press to its stable of Auto Trader, Trade-a-Boat, Motor Cycle Trader, Farm Trader, Deals-on-Wheels and Buy, Sell and Exchange.

Liberty's founder, Barry Colman, said ACP's move was regarded as a "friendly acquisition." It would maintain competition in the classified area which was otherwise dominated by newspaper publishers INL and Wilson & Horton.

The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.

The first of Liberty's classified titles was launched in l978 as an eight-page black-and-white real estate tabloid with a circulation of 8000. Today the stable publishes an average of 700 pages a week with print runs averaging 720,000 in property and car classified fields in New Zealand's six biggest cities.

Liberty's operations would continue to operate as a standalone company and all existing management and staff were to be retained.

Liberty Holdings, which owned the Liberty Press group, said its other main subsidiary, Fourth Estate Holdings, publisher of The National Business Review and other business publications, was not affected.

ACP is a subsidiary of Australian-listed company Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, which is 40% held by the Packer family. PBL's CEO, Peter Yates, last week told a gathering of Auckland business leaders that New Zealand was the third-biggest economy in the region after New South Wales and Victoria and his company regarded it as a growth investment target.

Comments from our readers

No comments yet