The Chinese are coming to publishing.
International Data Group, the company founded by the late billionaire Pat McGovern, has sold the majority stake to China Oceanwide Holdings.
Following McGovern’s death in 2014, the company was controlled by the McGovern estate with proceeds going to the McGovern Foundation which funded brain cancer research.
IDG’s investment arm, IDG Capital, which counts Accel Partners and Breyer Capital as limited partners, is a minority stakeholder in the new ownership. China Oceanwide is headed by billionaire Lu Zhiqiang. At one point, IDG Capital and Oceanwide were both bidding against each other for the publisher.
But at the suggestion of Goldman Sachs, which represented the McGovern estate, the two decided to do a combined bid.
Hugo Shong, the IDG Capital boss and a longtime IDG executive and protégé of McGovern, is expected to be named chairman of the new joint venture, sources tell Media Ink. The existing management structure is expected to stay largely in place with headquarters in Boston.
Under McGovern, the publisher of PCWorld, Macworld and CIO Magazine, expanded to publish more than 200 magazines worldwide — most now available only in digital format.
After its founding as a data company in 1964, it grew into an international behemoth with more than 60 titles in China alone. It also has a joint venture with Hearst to publish the Chinese versions of Cosmo, Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Reuters had previously reported that IDG was in talks to sell itself to an undisclosed Chinese buyout firm for $500 million to $1 billion.
The deal for IDG marks just the latest excursion by deep-pocketed Asian buyers into US media.
Forbes Media was taken over in 2014 by Integrated Whale Media, controlled by Hong Kong financiers Yam Tak-Cheung (aka TC Yam) and Wong Siu Wah (aka Sammy Wong), along with Singapore businessman Wayne Hsieh.
Then in November, Guggenheim Partners sold Dick Clark Productions for $1 billion to Dalian Wanda Group, the world’s No. 1 cinema owner, controlled by billionaire Wang Jianlin.
