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December 6, 2006updated 22 Nov 2022 9:56pm

Heath: Revamped title will do The Business

By Press Gazette

The new editor of The Business is confident that the magazine can become as established as The Economist and The Spectator in the next few years, saying there is no doubt that its recent relaunch as a weekly magazine has safeguarded its long-term future.

Allister Heath takes over as editor on 1 January having spent four years as deputy editor. The current editor, Ian Watson, who joined in 2001, will now become an editor-at-large and continue to contribute longer features and articles to the magazine.

Heath, 29, joined the magazine in April 2002 as an economics correspondent — his first job in journalism — and was made deputy editor in June last year.

He told Press Gazette: "We are London's only business magazine with a global outlook. There are a few in America, but we are really leading the way here. We think in this age there is a huge, untapped market for what we do."

Heath will report directly to Andrew Neil, chief executive of Press Holdings Magazine Group, which also owns The Spectator and arts magazine Apollo.

The Business, now 10 years old, relaunched as a 72-page glossy, A4 magazine aimed at City traders and hedge fund managers in October. It was making heavy losses of up to £3.5m a year, but Neil has said he hopes The Business will be profit-making by 2008.

Heath said he was on target to reach a paid-for sale of 47,000 a week. "Subscriptions are doing well, and we've had great success with our European readership," he said.

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"Our problem never was our editorial content and a lot of what we did as a newspaper was suitable for a magazine anyway.

"And because we come out on Thursday we can scoop all the Sunday papers' business sections on big stories."

Before joining The Business, Heath was head of the European Journal and was in charge of research at the Europe Foundation. The Press Holdings titles are to relocate to offices near Westminster in the New Year — where Heath hopes the magazine will stay long-term.

"I'm convinced we have safeguarded out future now. I want us to be as established a part of the media landscape as The Economist or The Spectator. "We have the right model, the right target audience and the right talent to do it. There's no doubt about that."

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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