Willis Stein Partners LLC portfolio company Ziff Davis Media Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (
see petition filing pdf). Over the summer, the magazine publisher hired restructuring advisers Alvarez & Marsal LLC to help restructure $390 million in debt after failing to make a bond interest payment.
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The company has struggled since the end of the dot-com bubble, which is about the time that Willis Stein purchased the company in a leveraged buyout that saddled the company with a heavy debt load. It now is much smaller, both through attrition following the closure of magazines and sales of titles.
Last July, Ziff Davis sold its enterprise publication group to Insight Venture Partners, leaving it with three titles: Electronic Gaming Monthly, Games for Windows and PC Magazine. Before the Insight deal, the company had attempted to sell itself in three pieces but failed to find buyers for PC Magazine. Reportedly, buyers had placed bids for its video game unit, but they only wanted its 1UP.com Web site, leading ZD to walk away from the table.
See the full story from TheDeal.com and The Daily Deal.- Matthew Wurtzel
See story from BtoB
See earlier stories from Dealscape
See petition filing pdf
See a list of Ziff Davis' 269 Internet domain names
Comments
Jim Louderback(sp) damned near ran PC Magazine into to toilet... massive "make-over" that destroyed readership.