The Financial Times’ specialist Pensions Expert brand has been sold to DG Publishing, saving it from closure.
The FT had revealed plans to close Pensions Expert, which runs a website and the Pensions and Investment Provider Awards, at around the end of March.
However DG Publishing has now acquired the Pensions Expert brand, IP, website and previous content, meaning it will continue under new ownership.
A letter to readers from Peter Dodds, commercial director at FT Specialist, in February said the brand was “no longer financially viable in its current form” despite efforts to grow it digitally.
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It launched as Pensions Week in 1997 after the Pensions Act of 1995 and relaunched as Pensions Expert in 2014 but its print magazine closed in 2020. According to an FT commercial webpage, the brand had “16,200 unique FT users”.
DG Publishing, founded in 2004, has a portfolio of pensions information content and event brands, including the LAPF Investments magazine and the Private & Public Pensions Summit.
Neil Desmond, joint managing director of DG Publishing, said: “Pensions Expert is a publication that we’ve long admired for the quality of its content and fits with our wider strategy to provide good quality content to the whole of the pensions industry.
“The acquisition of a publication of Pensions Expert’s standing is an amazing opportunity to grow our wider offering and activity, building on our already successful conference programmes.”
Pensions Expert to be ‘integrated’ into wider DG group
Joint managing director Brian Gielty said Pensions Expert will be integrated “with wider DG Publishing activity” within the coming weeks and months “as we look to build out the publication”.
The acquisition did not include any staff but there is a temporary editor in place with recruitment for a permanent editor to take place soon and freelance copy being published in the meantime.
Gielty said: “It’s incredibly exciting to be able to take our business to another level through acquiring Pensions Expert. We believe that great content and good, well-balanced, debate are crucial in helping the industry meet the challenges that it faces. We were sad to see that Pensions Expert was going to close, and by taking it on we hope to continue its tradition of leading the way with expert analysis and insight.
“We’d like to pass on our thanks to the Financial Times team in helping manage a smooth transition.”
Carola York, FT Specialist managing director, Europe, said: “Pensions Expert has played an important role in sharing information and encouraging debate in the pensions sector over the last quarter of a century, and we believe that DG Publishing will be an excellent owner for the publication.”
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