Posted on Fri, Feb. 13, 2004
PUBLISHING
Boca financier buys Penthouse magazine
A Boca Raton investor is leading the charge to remake ailing Penthouse into a softer, young men's magazine, akin to Maxim and FHM.
BY CHRISTINA HOAG
choag@herald.com
Boca Raton financier Marc Bell, a former Internet wunderkind turned real estate investor, has found a new pet project: publishing Penthouse magazine.
His plan is to soft-pedal the now bankrupt Penthouse's notoriously X-rated content and relaunch it as a young men's magazine akin to Maxim and FHM.
''We want to realign the magazine and take it to the center,'' he said. ``It's got very hard-core and lost a lot of readership because of that.''
Bell, who heads private equity firm Marc Bell Capital Partners, is leading an investment group that has amassed 89 percent of the magazine's approximately $45 million in bonds.
The group plans to invest up to $50 million to turn around the magazine, whose parent company, General Media of New York, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last August when it could not meet its bond payments.
Last month, a judge approved Bell's reorganization plan for General Media, which also owns several Penthouse spin-off magazines and adult-entertainment businesses. They include subscription Internet sites, video and DVD production and distribution, and licensing of the Penthouse brand on products such as gentlemen's clubs.'
'There's a lot of value there,'' Bell said.
Under Bell's plan, Penthouse's flamboyant but aging publisher, Robert C. Guccione, would continue as publisher emeritus for the next decade.
