How is the wealthiest Romanian investing in media tool?

From “Adevarul de Seara” to Forbes

Fabrica de Glucoza Street, in Pipera area, where the news service Adevarul Holding has its head office, is covered by dust veiled by a dumper that makes room into the construction site. In the left, there is a two-story building - the editorial offices of Adevarul, Click!, Dilema Veche and Dilemateca.

Razvan Corneteanu, managing director of Adevarul Holding enters the office holding a “trial version” of “Adevarul de Seara”, a free paper with national coverage, which was launched in that very same day. A week before, Adevarul Holding launched Top 500 Billionaires, the list of 500 richest Romanians.

Adevarul, the flagship publication of the media company, was re-launched late last month, when the acquisition of Ukrainian paper Blik, edited by Ringier was confirmed.

In the following months, the company will American magazine Forbes, process that nears to completion. Adevarul de Seara will have a 250,000 circulation and will be distributed free of charge in seven cities in the country.

The conjunction Adevarul – Adevarul de Seara closes an information loop, according to Corneteanu. Even if he does not expect the free newspaper to bolster clients’ loyalty up to increasing the circulation of the paid newspaper, the manager forecasts a growth in number of readers for Adevarul daily and enhanced brand awareness. Moreover, it gives him the possibility to forward more interesting offers to advertising clients.

Adevarul de Seara, the first paper its range, is “cooked-up” for more than a year, based on a development blueprint framed together with German and Spanish advisors. Corneteanu is proud of his project, which puts a brick in the wall of “the strongest press brand in Romania”. Its launch will be celebrated together with all the employees of the company, in the presence of Dinu Patriciu.

From typing machines to printing machines

“When I took over Adevarul in 2006, they were still using typing machines,” said Corneteanu. Few months after it was bought by Dinu Patriciu from Ana Maria Tinu, the helm of the paper was assigned to Razvan Corneteanu, aged 37, former manager of Boulevard&Sports division at Ringier.

“In 2007, we built an image. After removing all the puzzle objects and started to piece them back together one by one on the board,” said Corneteanu. “Puzzle objects” include successive re-launchings of Adevarul daily and its supplements, acquisition of Averea tabloid, its rebranding into Click!, launch of Foreign Policy magazine, the projects in the last half of year and real-estate components.

The destination chosen for the land in the left is explanation for the construction site and dust cloud. Adevarul Holding has recently invested in building four new printing offices; one of them will be located in Bucharest, near the head office of the media company. The other three will be emplaced in the country, and will print both Adevarul Holding’s publications and those belonging to other media companies, for profit.

Building the printing-offices is one of the most important investments of Dinu Patriciu in the media company. Corneteanu did not disclose the value of investments, but he announced that investments pace of Adevarul Holding will be similar in the following years. At this point, the media company is registering losses. In 2007, Adevarul Holding posted 3.7 million euros, in the context of 65.4 million euros turnover.

“One of the biggest qualities of Dinu Patriciu is that he had the confidence in giving the money in the hands of some managers to use them in projects. And he had the courage to do that. I’m telling from my experience that are not many investors willing to do this,” said Corneteanu, after 13 years work experience in Swiss media corporation Ringier.

Translated by Camelia Oancea