It generated revenues to the tune of $20m in 2013, and divulged that its revenue had expanded 70% in 2014, according to Re/code. The Re/code report comes about a week after German publication Manager Magazin reported that Axel Springer was interested in buying a controlling stake in Business Insider.
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Disclosure: If the Axel Springer/Business Insider deal goes through, it should be good news for me.
Blodget, a former top Internet analyst for Merrill Lynch, founded Silicon Alley Insider after agreeing to a lifetime ban from the securities industry to settle a probe into conflict-ridden research reports.
The company is also in the process of selling off its Russian publishing business, including the Russian editions of Forbes and OK! magazines, following new laws that restrict foreign ownership of Russian media. In June, Recode sold to Vox in an all-stock transaction in a pre-emptive move to stop burning through the $10 million it had raised from NBCUniversal and Windsor Media. The company had 42.7 million unique USA visitors in August, up 54 percent from a year earlier, according to researcher ComScore Inc. The Berlin-based publisher already has significant digital-only publishing experience: among other things, it owns half of Politico’s European operation.
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Axel Springer, which has an office in New York, is best-known in Europe as the owner of newspapers Die Welt and Bild. Earlier this year it tried to buy the Financial Times from Pearson but lost the deal at the last second to Japan’s Nikkei.
