BackBjarne Corydon Takes Over at Børsen
In November, it was announced that former Danish Finance Minister Bjarne Corydon would take over as editor-in-chief and publisher starting Jan. 1, 2018, replacing Anders Krab-Johansen, who had left in the summer.
Bonnier Business to Business
The year 2017 is now history. If anything good has come out of the year’s world-changing political events, then it is that the value of independent and professional journalism has come into the spotlight stronger than ever.
The overall view that digital news should be free has changed. This was certainly helpful to all professional publishers including us, where increasing revenues for paid content is one of our primary strategic goals.
Norwegian online subscription and medical information service for physicians, NHI, is the market leader with 40 percent.
At Bonnier’s Business to Business companies, which consist of a range of business news and niche publications as well as handbooks, events and other related business in Eastern Europe and the Nordic region, our editorial offices have made many improvements together with commercial teams to focus on engagement of paying readers and attracting potential new subscribers. Many of our businesses delivered growing subscription numbers after years of decline. A combination of corporate sales, data analytics and relentless sales efforts have put us back on a growth track.
Our advertising teams across the board have continued their strong efforts to make the best of the overall challenging situation. We have many examples of growing advertising sales, which is an achievement on its own.
One of the proofs of our entrepreneurial mind has been that challenging times in advertising markets have pushed us to focus even more on finding additional revenues in other areas. Our conferences and training revenues have been growing by double-digit percentage in all markets.
The year 2017 also saw us welcoming many new colleagues into the business area through acquisitions.
Lexnet in Lithuania has opened up a new line of business for B2B by providing decision support solutions to legal professionals.
SpotData in Poland is a step towards establishing ourselves as a business information provider beyond more traditional content publishing.
Also in Poland, eRanking will help us strengthen our offer in the lead-generation business.
IT Koolitus – an IT training company acquired in Estonia – will help our business take a market-leading position in the niche of IT professionals.
In the healthcare and pharma niche, we launched a clinical decision support tool, Gesinform/Deximed, in Germany in January. Netdoktor, acquired in 2016 in Sweden, has been expanding to Finland and Norway during the year.
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In January, a 49.9 percent share in our Danish business daily Børsen was sold to JP/Politikens Hus, following objections from Danish competition authorities to a full sale of the paper.
Our schools eLearning business Clio in Denmark started to re-focus its approach to the market for 2018, after which subsidies will disappear. In Sweden, middle school portals were launched in addition to the high school launch in September 2016.
Karmo Kaas-Lutsberg, Business Area Head
Facts and figures
| SEK M | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net Sales | 1,130 | 1,111 | 1,141 |
| EBITA | 131 | 164 | 165 |
Countries:
Austria*
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
Germany
Lithuania
Norway
Poland
Slovenia
Sweden
*KnowledgeFox in Austria was sold in the beginning of 2018
Companies:
Bonnier Business Press
Børsen
Clio Group