The Racing Post's new Irish owners plan to expand the brand into international markets and have lined up a number of senior management changes at the title.
FL Partners, led by former IBI Corporate Finance executives, Peter Crowley and Neil Hughes, yesterday said they would buy the Racing Postbusiness from UK publisher Trinity Mirror for €250 million. The deal followed several months of talks.
Irishman Alan Byrne, a former Racing Posteditor, takes over immediately as chief executive and editor-in-chief. FL Partners intends to invest significant resources in developing the business. Mr Crowley said yesterday that it would be taking a "three-pronged approach" to this.
"The first is the website which is already very good," he said. "We're going to develop a Reuters-style service for customers, but it will also carry more in-depth material that we don't have room for in the paper itself."
FL will also use the web as a first step to bringing the brand into global markets. "We want to apply the same rigour to racing in international markets that the Post applies to Irish and British racing," he said.
Mr Crowley gave Hong Kong, where racing is the most popular spectator sport, as an example of a region that it would target initially. However, he stressed that the company was looking at all opportunities.
FL also intends to invest further cash in developing and bolstering the daily and weekend papers' editorial content.
Bruce Millington, who edits the title's sports betting section, will be appointed editor of the daily title.
Current editor Chris Smith will become managing editor with a strategic brief that will involve integrating and developing the print and on-line editions.
Mr Crowley said that like all UK-based newspapers, the Post had suffered a slide in circulation in recent years, but the company believed it could arrest that, if not turn it around.
Outside the Racing Postitself, which is published seven days a week, the business includes three weeklies, the Racing Post Weekender, Raceform Updateand Racing and Football Outlook.
The company also publishes the official British formbook, essentially a database of the complete results of all races run Britain, under the Raceform banner, and racing books under the Highdown brand.
The €250 million price was about €30 million less than the value placed on the deal by market observers. It is slightly less than 10 times 2006 earnings before interest, tax and write-offs, putting this figure at over €25 million. The vendor said the purchase price represented 11.2 times last year's operating profits, which came to more than €22 million, and 3.4 times revenues.
FL was backed by Anglo Irish Bank, which supplied the debt.
The deal involves a number of unnamed Irish high net worth individuals, all of whom are racing fans. Mr Crowley said last night that they regarded the purchase as a long-term play. "It is not a classic private equity deal in the sense that we will be exiting in three to five years, or anything like it," he stressed.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, a leading member of the Dubaian royal family, which has global racing interests, owned the title. As a condition of its sale, he asked Trinity to donate £10 million sterling to four charities. Three are racing related.
The fourth is Direct Aid for Africa, a charity founded and promoted by Irish racehorse trainer and gambler Barney Curley.
Sheikh Mohammed founded the paper along with director, Brough Scott in 1986. Mr Scott described yesterday's deal as "very good news" for the paper.
