Thursday, April 10, 2008

Another B2B publisher announces layoffs

Less than 24 hours ago I wrote a post about layoffs at Nielsen Business Media and said "I don't think today's layoffs will be the last we'll see in 2008."
Well as much as it pains me to say so -- I was right.
This afternoon Ziff Davis Enterprises announced it is is restructuring and laying off an undisclosed number of workers. The restructuring isn't a surprise. ZDE announced in January that it would restructure. But until today it was unclear if there would be layoffs.
ZDE, which publishes Baseline, CIO Insight and eWeek, is the former B2B unit of Ziff Davis Media. Private equity firm Insight Venture Partners bought the properties for around $160 million earlier this year.

It's worth noting that layoffs aren't the only thing that Nielsen and ZDE have in common. Both companies suffered through an embarrassing ethics scandal last year. (You can read about Nielsen's problems here (the company was called VNU then) and read about Ziff's problems here.)

News of the layoffs comes just days after Insight Venture Partners announced that ZDE had "received funding" of $20 million from venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners. The size of Bessemer's stake in ZDE has not been disclosed.

(Addendum: Nielsen says that yesterday's cuts are part of a restructuring that had been scheduled to end in December of last year. A total of 4,000 jobs were slated for removal in that process. Folio magazine reports today that as many as 200 people may have lost their jobs yesterday.)

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