Property Week strengthens CMPi’s construction portfolio, says Gray
CMP Information, the B2B magazine arm of United Business Media, has acquired full ownership of the Property Media joint venture that includes Property Week.
CMPi has acquired the remaining 50 per cent of the vompany, which was previously a joint venture between CMPi and the Builder Group.
About 50 staff are affected and will transfer from their offices in London’s Docklands to UBM’s headquarters at Ludgate House, Blackfriars. No redundancies are expected.
The acquisition of Property Week will strengthen CMPi’s presence in the property and building markets and will provide the company with a direct competitor to Estates Gazette, which is owned by Reed Business Information.
Property Week is aimed at commercial property agents, chartered surveyors, developers, investors and occupiers, and has a circulation of over 25,000. It will sit alongside CMPi’s existing titles Building Design, What’s New in Building?, Glass Age, Tile UK and Intra.
CMPi chief executive Bernard Gray said: “It gives us a very strong participation in the construction area, all the way through from original design and specification of the buildings to lettings, so we think there are some strong commercial gains to be had from us working across the entire construction portfolio. It does make our construction offering considerably stronger.”
The takeover also includes a number of award events and conferences, including the Property Awards.
Meanwhile, UBM has been hit by the impact of the SARS virus. CMPi’s sister company in Hong Kong, CMP Asia, has postponed at least one exhibition and there are fears the UK company could be affected if the virus spreads to Europe.
“I believe they have postponed at least one exhibition,” said Gray. “In Hong Kong and Shanghai, people are making decisions about postponing and people are saying they want exhibition halls to be temporarily closed, so it’s obviously having a much bigger impact over there than here.
“For us, the only impact would be if we had Far Eastern exhibitors and visitors who didn’t come to our shows in the UK.”
CMPi has a show this month and two exhibitions towards the end of the year which attract a number of exhibitors from the Far East. Gray said they would be represented by their European marketing companies.
“As far as we can tell, we don’t think there is an significant impact,” he added.
“We have got a watching brief on it and if it came to Europe, it might become more serious, but it’s not a huge deal.”
By Ruth Addicott
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