Daily News owner buys Financial Gazette

The promotion said subscribers of the print edition of the Financial Gazette would start receiving free copies of South Africa’s Financial Mail “in yet another example of smart partnerships being pursued by Zimbabwe’s iconic business and financial newspaper to enhance its product offering”.

They were also to get free access to the e-business daily newsletter, Business Live.

Financial Gazette editor-in-chief Hama Saburi also announced, in the promotion, that the “pink paper” would undertake various changes, including a major redesign and lay-out and its website would only be accessible to subscribers from June.

Deep down the promotion Saburi says the Financial Gazette and Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, publishers of the Daily News and the Daily News on Sunday, have forged “rewarding synergies” between the two organisations in the critical areas of distribution and printing.

He adds: “In this environment, if you don’t innovate you will die. We will therefore continue to explore other opportunities similar to what we have been doing whereby we re-configured our distribution and printing arrangements, with amazing outcomes for both partners.

“There is a lot more we can do. We are even looking at changing our location so that our valued customers can do business with us without having to worry about the frustrating congestion and chaos in down-town Harare, where we are currently operating from.

“A key consideration will obviously be to situate ourselves where we can easily converse and coordinate with the providers of essential services to save on time and eliminate logistical nightmares in our day to day activities.

“We are not limiting our horizons; the underlining objective is that of achieving a lean, mean structure, hence we will more than welcome any partnership, synergy or alliance that could bring down costs in terms of rentals, by way of shared services or resources to bring about precision and speed as we navigate the obtaining harsh economic climate.”

Sources said this was confirmation that the Financial Gazette will be leaving its Thomson House premises, probably at the end of this month, to settle at its new owners offices at Eastgate.

Some of the current Financial Gazette employees are likely to be laid off but Saburi is likely to retain his job, though, a new editor had been identified when ANZ bought the pink paper.

(1200 VIEWS)