Salesforce’s Marc Benioff Picks Up Time Magazine For $190 Million By Hannah Norman – Blog Post #419 – Business Information From The Field of Master Mind News (MMN)

Marc Benioff is the latest tech titan to snap up a major news publication.

The Salesforce.com founder and his wife, Lynne Benioff, have agreed to purchase Time Magazine for $190 million in cash, a transaction expected to close within 30 days, according to Meredith Corporation.

The Iowa-based media company bought Time, Inc. just eight months ago, though soon after said it had plans to sell the flagship magazine, along with Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money, in an effort to home in on its core audience of American women.

“We can’t imagine better stewards for Time than Marc and Lynne Benioff,” said Time Editor-in-Chief Edward Felthensal in a statement. “The team is inspired by their commitment to high-quality journalism and by their confidence in the work we have done to transform and expand the brand in new directions.”

The family’s purchase is unrelated to Salesforce, where Benioff remains chairman and co-CEO.

“We are honored to be the caretakers of one of the world’s most important media companies and iconic brands,” the Benioffs said in the statement. “Time has always been a trusted reflection of the state of the world, and reminds us that business is one of the greatest platforms for change.”

The husband and wife duo joins the likes of Amazon’s Jeff Bezo’s, who in 2013 acquired the Washington Post for $250 million, and Laurene Powell Jobs, Emerson Collective founder and widow of Steve Jobs, who last year purchased a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine.

Last month, Benioff  promoted Keith Block to co-CEO of the San Francisco-based cloud computing giant, alleviating the founder of much of his day-to-day duties. Salesforce is the city’s largest tech employer, with 8,000 employees in San Francisco and 30,000 total spanning the globe, according to Business Times research.

The company is gearing up for its annual Dreamforce event later this month, showing off its gleaming new Salesforce Tower office space adjacent to the city’s freshly minted $2.2 billion transit center, which also shares the tech giant’s name.

With a net-worth of $6.7 billion, Benioff has long embraced an activist-CEO mantra and poured millions into philanthropy across the Bay Area. He and his wife donated some $200 million to two of the region’s children’s hospitals — one in San Francisco and the other in Oakland — and to UCSF, where Lynne Benioff serves on the foundation’s board. In May, Marc Benioff said he and Salesforce would collectively donate $3 million in an effort to curb homelessness in San Francisco.