Future set to buy Highbury's non-games mags for £30.5 million

Magazine publisher Future Plc has announced a bid to buy the magazine portfolio of rival firm Highbury House - with the exception of the videogames magazines, which proved to be a stumbling block in its bid to buy the company outright.

The deal, which is still subject to shareholder approval at both firms, will see Future paying £30.5 million for 38 magazines from Highbury's portfolio, including a wide range of specialist interest titles such as Fast Car, DJ, DVD Review and the company's puzzle magazines, and a selection of trade magazines including Home Entertainment Week.

Explicitly not included in the deal, however, are Highbury's videogames titles - including GamesTM, Play, XBM and Cube - whose inclusion in a previous £97 million bid to acquire Highbury outright led to its referral to the UK's Competition Commission, as it would have given Future a 95 per cent share of the games magazine market.

Future dropped its bid for Highbury only hours after that referral was made, and has now returned to the table with this new offer - which will leave the fate of Highbury's games portfolio very much unclear. It's not known whether Highbury will attempt to run the games magazines as a separate business, or if it will now seek a different buyer for the publications.

"These are classic special-interest magazines which will be great additions to the Future portfolio," according to Future chief executive Greg Ingham. "We look forward to welcoming warmly the people who work on these titles to Future. I am delighted that we have managed to reach agreement with the Highbury Board to secure a positive outcome for both businesses."

"This deal has several of the attractions of the larger one with Highbury from which we withdrew earlier this month," he continued. "We have built up considerable knowledge of Highbury's portfolio over the past few months and thus have been able to move swiftly."

Approval from the shareholders of both Future and Highbury is expected to be gained by the end of June.