Hearst Expected to Buy Esquire Magazine

NEW YORK —  Esquire magazine, which accomplished a remarkable turnaround in recent years, is expected to be sold within days to Hearst Corp., publishing industry sources said Wednesday.

New York Woman magazine, Esquire’s 4-year-old sister publication, is expected to be sold to American Express before the year’s end.

None of the companies would comment, but industry sources estimated that Esquire might fetch more than $35 million in light of its recent growth and its appeal to advertisers seeking an affluent male readership. Fifty-three-year-old Esquire has carried the writings of many major American writers and still seeks an affluent and cultivated readership with a mixture of articles on fashion and current events, satire and short stories.

Esquire and New York Woman are owned by Esquire Magazines Group, which also owns Esquire Health and Fitness division, Esquire Video and the Esquire Press book publishing firm.

“The last ‘T’ may not be crossed, but everybody here is acting as if Hearst is the boss,” one Esquire employee said. The change in owners is expected to be accompanied by a change in at least one senior editor.

Hearst is not known for paying hefty premiums for magazines, but increasingly the largest magazine firms are purchasing existing publications rather than taking on the risk and cost of a starting new ones. Esquire would join a Hearst stable that includes Sports Afield, Popular Mechanics, Boating, Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar.

The magazine and related enterprises were built by current owner Phillip Moffitt and his former partner, Christopher Whittle. In 1979, the two Tennesseans bought the then-foundering magazine from Associated Newspaper Group of England and had restored it to financial success by the mid-1980s.

“It’s been a miraculous comeback,” said Richard LePere, a magazine consultant in Washington. He credited the turnaround to the promotional abilities of Moffitt and Whittle as well as to the editors’ ability to recapture some of the magazine’s former flair.

Last April, the two men divided the company, which had been known as 13-30 Corp. Whittle formed a new firm, Whittle Communications, with a group of 13-30’s newsletters and smaller magazines.

Esquire sold 1,400 pages of advertising last year, up from 495 in 1983. Revenue totaled $32 million in 1985, up 7% from 1984. This year, a flat year for the industry, Esquire’s page count has declined 7% to 1,300. For the first nine months of 1986, revenue totaled $20.6 million, down 1.4% from the corresponding period of 1985.

With the aging of the baby boom population, Esquire has been recently reshaping its editorial content to appeal to an older group, a spokesman said.