Questex Buys Online Publisher FierceMarkets
Global expansion planned for e-content company.
Questex Media has acquired new media publisher FierceMarkets, which offers e-mail newsletters, Web sites, Webinars and live events in the telecom, life sciences, healthcare and IT and finance industries.
FierceMarkets, which officially went on the block this past summer, did more than $5.2 million in revenue in 2007 and is profitable, and boasts 45 percent compound annual growth over the last five years. The company has posted triple digit annual audience growth, with an audience of more than 550,000 registered users. In 2007, FierceMarkets Inc. was named to the Inc. 5,000 list of fastest growing companies, ranking 1,706th.
The FierceMarkets management team, including president Jeff Giesea [above], will remain with the company and stay headquartered in Washington, DC. “There are a number of different ways where Questex can help us accelerate entry into market, and we can help them increase digital revenue at a faster pace,” Giesea tells FOLIO:. “Questex is very global—we have a strong presence in the telecom industry in North America and they’re very strong in Asia. A number of our advertisers want to reach audiences in Europe and Asia. That’s probably the lowest-hanging opportunity to create some value.”
Questex has purchased a number of companies outside the traditional b-to-b publishing purview to complement its existing products over the past year, including Imaging Network, a b-to-b multimedia marketing company serving the office products industry and Five Star Alliance, an online luxury hotel booking service.
The Jordan, Edmiston Group represented FierceMarkets in the transaction. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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