Beneath the optimism surrounding the resurgence of the mergers and acquisitions market in b-to-b media there is an unspoken sense of caution. As bankers are making financing more readily available, the mild trepidation in the market is evident in how today's buyers seem more aware than some of their predecessors were of a sometimes frightening four-letter word—debt. When the technology market went south in 2000 and it become apparent that Internet plays wouldn't generate profits as soon as some people hoped, aggressive buyers such as Penton Media, Pnmedia and Ziff Davis Media found that the blessing of leverage had become a curse. For b-to-b executives today, the experiences of these companies serve as cautionary tales. " I think leverage is just a philosophy," said Cameron Bishop, CEO of Ascend Media, which is backed by JPMorgan Partners and Veronis Suhler Stevenson. " Some people want to push it to the max; we don't. We take a more conservative view of leverage. We are not and will not push it to the lim-it."
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