Just saw this story come across the newswire:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Landmark Communications, which is set to earn about $3.5 billion (1.79 billion pounds) from the sale of The Weather Channel, is preparing to sell Dominion Enterprises, a portfolio of advertising websites and publications, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
The privately held company, owned by the Batten Family of Norfolk, Virginia, has distributed information to potential bidders on Dominion, the paper said.
Landmark said in January that it might sell off the company’s various businesses, which include a range of daily U.S. newspapers, television and Internet assets.
Sources have said Landmark is in direct talks with Time Warner Inc and a consortium consisting of NBC Universal, Bain Capital and Blackstone for the Weather Channel auction.
Dominion, which has assets range from trade magazines and classified publications to real estate and travel websites, such as Homes.com, EmploymentGuide.com and Traderonline.com, could fetch about $1.4 billion, a person familiar with its finances told the FT, and could see interest from a range of private equity firms.
Dominion’s performance has suffered lately because of its heavy exposure to the real estate, job search and automotive markets, the paper said.
In the rental space, Dominion publishes For Rent magazine and also runs ForRent.com. They’ve always kept their focus on the multi-family side of things but it will still be interesting to see what happens with this big player in the rental advertising world.
