Modern Luxury CEO: Market ‘very strong’ amid magazine buys
Modern Luxury, the regional magazine publisher controlled by the Dickey family, confirmed it has finally purchased Greengale Publishing, owners of Hampton, Gotham, Ocean Drive and L.A. Confidential among other magazine titles.
Modern Luxury CEO Michael Dickey said he does not plan to close any of the newly acquired titles despite overlap in a number of cities, including Beach in the Hamptons, Manhattan magazine in New York City and other markets including Chicago and Miami.
“It took years to do, but we finally got it done,” said Dickey of the deal that he finally announced on Monday.
Terms of the merger were not disclosed.
News that a deal was finally being signed after years of on-again, off-again negotiations was first reported on nypost.com Monday.
“Our goal is to keep all the magazines up and running and to increase sales staff and editorial staff in those markets,” said Dickey. He conceded that there would be some “synergies” regarding staffing at back shop operations but had no numbers to reveal.
Both Modern Luxury and Greengale have been cutting costs, but Modern Luxury has also been expanding its footprint. Last year, it started Silicon Valley magazine and has plans on the books to start Palm Beach magazine in November.
“The ad market for publishing in general has been decreasing but for Modern Luxury it has been increasing,” Dickey said. “The luxury market remains very strong.”
Indeed, Dickey said the deal is about expanding a footprint for luxury advertisers.
“We’re now in the top 20 resort markets in the country,” Dickey said.
Executives from Greengale were not immediately available for comment.
Katherine Nicholls, the CEO of Greengale, is going to retire but the chief financial officer of Greengale, Jonathan Kushnir, will become the CFO of the combined company, which will now boast 84 regional magazines including CS [Chicago Social], San Francisco magazine, Houston magazine, Miami magazine and Atlantan magazine among others.
Greengale Publishing was controlled by Jane Greenspun Gale, a scion of a Las Vegas real estate and publishing family and her husband Jeff Gale.
Lewis Dickey, recently forced out as CEO of troubled radio giant Cumulus Media, is the chairman of Modern Luxury. The Dickey family remains one of the largest
shareholders in Cumulus, but it is a separate entity from the publishing company that was acquired from GE Capital in September 2010.
Greengale Publishing emerged from the family-run Greenspun Media, a Las Vegas-based media company that at one time included the Las Vegas Sun newspaper and other Las Vegas titles. It added Ocean Drive and later purchased Jason Binn’s Niche Media for what is believed to have been a $100 million plus deal in 2007.
But when the Great Recession hit, the value of the ad supported properties declined coupled with losses and a bitter family feud that shattered the Greenspun family. The family got its start when dad Hank Greenspun served as a publicist for Bugsy Siegel.
After the patriarch’s death, a bitter family feud erupted and various siblings divided up the company. Brian Greenspun emerging as the sole owner of the paper and Jane took over the former Niche Media titles in a magazine company. It changed the company name from Niche to Greengale Publishing in 2015.