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January 15, 2009

Citywire bucks trend with major weekly magazine launch

By Dominic Ponsford

Independent business publisher Citywire is launching a new weekly business magazine aimed at wealth managers.

Citywire Wealth Manager has an editorial team of nine and will have a controlled circulation of 9,000.

It goes up against established titles such as Investment Week, run by Incisive, and Centaur’s Fund Strategy.

Citywire is 25 per cent owned by Reuters and was founded by the former Times business editor Lawrence Lever in 1999.

It also runs the website www.citywire.co.uk and the magazines New Model Adviser and Citywire Fund Selector as well as several events and a fund manager ratings service.

Editor Charlie Parker, 26, is bullish about the new title’s prospects – claiming that it has found a new niche of readers who are not currently served by the market.

And he believes that established publishers in the fund manager sector may be heading for trouble.

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He said: “There are going to be trade magazines in this space that are going to close this year, that’s absolutely certain.

“We think we are in a better position to grow our market share because we’ve been more cautious going into this crisis.

“We believe that if you run a business cautiously and grow it organically by getting to know your readers better rather than by by buying businesses you don’t understand – then when the bad times come you can grow your market share.”

Explaining why Citywire had chosen to launch a print magazine, rather than an online publication, Parker said that the research showed that readers prefered to read features and longer profile pieces in print rather than online.

He added: “This audience are financially powerful but almost totally unknown, it operates in a niche which doesn’t let anybody in.

“Because nobody else serves this market there is potential to break stories in print. This is also a part of the market where people still like print because it’s an older audience.”

The new title will have three different front covers each week aimed at different segments of its audience: one will highlight the content most suited to wealth manager readers, one is aimed at financial advisers and a third will use “personalisation technology” to target individual content at a different group of readers each week.

This technology will also be used commercially to let advertisers personalise their adverts to specific readers.

Parker said that the magazine had invested heavily in design and infographics and is produced by a team and will be produced by a team which has won more awards than any other in the financial services industry.

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