
Time Magazine is being sold by Meredith Corp. to Mark Benioff, the co-founder of Salesforce, and his wife Lynne Benioff, for US $190 million, reports said on Sunday.
As per reports, the sale is expected to be closed within 30 days. The couple is buying the magazine personally and not as a part of Salesforce.com.
It would not involve day to day operations and journalistic decisions at Time. Those decisions will continue to be made by Time's current executive leadership team, reports said.
Salesforce, a cloud software company whose products are for businesses, competes with such rivals as Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp.
Meredith, the publisher of such magazines as People and Better Homes & Gardens, had put four Time Inc. publications up for sale in March. Negotiations for the sale of the three other publications — Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated — are still underway
Time has struggled with continued declines in print advertising and newsstand sales.
Under Time Inc., the magazine planned to slash costs incurred on printing while putting more money in the digital front.
Time has cut its circulation significantly to 2.3 million for the six-month period ended June 30, down from 3 million in the same period a year earlier.
The magazine has been trying to increase its digital audience, which grew to 31.7 million multiplatform unique visitors in July 2018, up from nearly 27.4 million in July 2015, according to media measurement firm comScore Inc.