Sentinel's parent company, Versa Capital Mgmt., announces merger

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Sep­tem­ber 11, 2012 –Versa Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, LLC (Versa), a pri­vate equity invest­ment firm, today announced the cre­ation of Civ­i­tas Media, LLC (Civ­i­tas), a new com­mu­nity news media com­pany. Civ­i­tas, Latin for “com­mu­nity” or “cit­i­zen”, com­bines four media enti­ties owned by Versa: Free­dom Cen­tral, Heart­land Pub­li­ca­tions, Impres­sions Media, and Ohio Com­mu­nity Media.

“We have assem­bled an excel­lent group of com­mu­nity news pub­lish­ers over the past 15 months and com­bin­ing them together under the Civ­i­tas umbrella is a log­i­cal and value-enhancing result,” stated Versa’s CEO Gre­gory L. Segall. “Community-based media has remained prof­itable and largely avoided the level of finan­cial pres­sure expe­ri­enced by large daily met­ros in recent years. They are the prin­ci­pal source of infor­ma­tion and news con­tent as well as the pri­mary adver­tis­ing vehi­cles for their com­mu­ni­ties, whether in print or online, and we see a more sta­ble and resilient future for this sector.”

“This is a pos­i­tive change for our local papers and it’s employ­ees,” said Sen­tinel Pub­lisher Vicki Tay­lor. “There are no oper­a­tional changes planned locally at this time.”

Civ­i­tas, which now employs 1,650 peo­ple at 47 loca­tions across 11 states in the Mid­west, Mid-Atlantic and South, serves its com­mu­ni­ties through its ded­i­ca­tion to the deliv­ery of local infor­ma­tion, includ­ing news and adver­tis­ing solu­tions, across a vari­ety of plat­forms. These com­mu­ni­ties are served by 36 local daily news­pa­pers includ­ing 19 with week­end edi­tions as well as 76 weekly prod­ucts. These papers have a com­bined aver­age weekly cir­cu­la­tion of 1.6 mil­lion. Civ­i­tas also serves these com­mu­ni­ties with numer­ous free, adver­tise­ment sup­ported pub­li­ca­tions and a grow­ing on-line pres­ence. In addi­tion, Civ­i­tas pub­lishes spe­cialty prod­ucts such as local com­mu­nity direc­to­ries, wine mag­a­zines, regional agri­cul­tural pub­li­ca­tions, realty pub­li­ca­tions, local enter­tain­ment guides and on-line mag­a­zines and SEO solutions.

The merged orga­ni­za­tion is led by CEO Michael Bush, for­merly the CEO of group mem­ber Heart­land Pub­li­ca­tions, and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Scott Cham­pion, for­merly the CEO of group mem­ber Ohio Com­mu­nity Media. The cap­i­tal­iza­tion and work­ing cap­i­tal require­ments of the busi­ness are sup­ported by a new $62.5 mil­lion multi-bank senior term loan and revolv­ing credit facil­ity led by RBS Cit­i­zens, N.A.

Bush com­mented, “I am very excited to be work­ing with Versa Cap­i­tal, which has assem­bled a valu­able col­lec­tion of com­mu­nity media assets and has a rep­u­ta­tion for sup­port­ing its com­pa­nies both finan­cially and oper­a­tionally. Civ­i­tas has a promis­ing future as a media com­pany, and is well posi­tioned to fur­ther ben­e­fit from the even­tual recov­ery of U.S. eco­nomic activity.”

Bush fur­ther noted “there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties for serv­ing the local com­mu­ni­ties as we real­ize syn­er­gies from our com­bined strength. At Heart­land we suc­cess­fully imple­mented sim­i­lar pro­grams, and I look for­ward to work­ing with the entire Civ­i­tas orga­ni­za­tion to explore best-in-class prac­tices that can be uti­lized across many plat­forms. We have many excel­lent edi­to­r­ial and adver­tis­ing pro­fes­sion­als with valu­able, local com­mu­nity ties. Our empha­sis will always be on the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.”

Segall con­cluded, “While oper­a­tional improve­ments are antic­i­pated in the near-term, we plan to leave day-to-day con­trol of edi­to­r­ial con­tent in the hands of the peo­ple who know the local mar­kets best.”

About Civ­i­tas Media, LLC

Civ­i­tas Media is a pub­lisher of com­mu­nity news­pa­pers in 11 Mid­west­ern, Mid-Atlantic, and South­ern states. The com­pany includes the fol­low­ing media groups: Free­dom Cen­tral, four daily news­pa­pers in Illi­nois, Ohio and Mis­souri; Heart­land Pub­li­ca­tions, 17 daily and 34 weekly papers across Geor­gia, Ken­tucky, North Car­olina, Ohio, Okla­homa, South Car­olina, Ten­nessee, Vir­ginia, and West Vir­ginia; Ohio Com­mu­nity Media, with 17 daily and 57 weekly pub­li­ca­tions across the state of Ohio.; and Impres­sions Media, which oper­ates the Wilkes Barre Times Leader and other local pub­li­ca­tions in the north­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia area. The com­pany employs approx­i­mately 1,650 people.

About Versa Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, LLC

Philadelphia-based Versa Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, LLC is a pri­vate equity invest­ment firm with $1.2 bil­lion of assets under man­age­ment that is focused on con­trol invest­ments in spe­cial sit­u­a­tions involv­ing mid­dle mar­ket com­pa­nies where value and per­for­mance growth can be achieved through enhanced oper­a­tional and finan­cial man­age­ment. More infor­ma­tion can be found at www.Versa.com.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Sep 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.