Inside Scoop on the Stagnito/Ascend Deal

Media reports have pegged Questex and Canon Communications as possible suiters for Ascend’s Stagnito beverage group, which multiple sources have confirmed to me is being actively shopped. (One source says the deal is going to be done within a month.) My question: is it Canon Communications or Apprise Media, the parent company?

If you look at Canon’s portfolio, you can see that food and beverage is not much of a fit–plastics, manufacturing, pharma, some medical product stuff. And, in fact, several sources have confirmed that it is indeed Apprise and not Canon that is the possible suitor.

Other possible suitors include BNP Media, the massive B2B company that owns top books in food processing. Many of their titles are directly competitive with Stagnito titles. Virgo publishing was another name I heard floating around, but some of my sources have speculated that Virgo is not one of the suitors. Virgo also competes head-to-head with Stagnito.

I’ve also heard there is some private equity that is looking at the company–and this comes as no surprise–but I don’t have any concrete leads on to which group it might be. I’ll keep you updated as information comes in.

What Will Become of Ascend?

I dug up a press release on the site of my parent company, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, going back to March 2003. At that time, VSS took a stake in Ascend along with JP Morgan Partners (which has since become CCMP Capital and is still part of the ownership group). In the release, VSS restates Ascends publicly acknowledged goals:

“Its stated business plan is to build a diversified business-to-business media powerhouse to reach revenues in excess of $100 million.”

Once Stagnito is gone, Ascend will be healthcare-focused. (Sources tell me that this is the buzz inside the company–that the divestment is intended to focus the company’s attention on health.) Diversified is the key word here. This then begs the question, what will happen to the rest of Ascend? In 2002, when Cam Bishop and Dan Altman formed the company, Altman told min’s b2b that “Our goal is three to five years out,” says Altman. “By the time we are up and running the economy will be too.”

Well, it’s been five years. Five years and three months, to be exact.