NU Parent Acquires Insurance Advocate

• New York Financial Services Advisor a life-health magazine.
• CRACKDOWN! a fraud prevention magazine, with related anti-fraud conferences.
• Several insurance book titles.

In addition to the Insurance Advocate's Associate Publisher, Stephen Acunto, Associate Editor Philip Gusman will remain with the magazine and will be relocated to the National Underwriter Company's Hoboken offices by the end of October. They join the Insurance Magazine Division headed by Tom Fowler, vice president and group publisher of NUCO.

Highline Media was formed in October 2003 by Spire Capital Partners, L.P., and Andrew L. Goodenough, its president and chief executive officer, to acquire business-to-business information assets in the financial services, insurance and real estate fields. Highline's first acquisition was NUCO, for which Mr. Goodenough now serves as president and CEO. NUCO recently added a major insurance and banking data division, acquired from Thomson.

Highline's intent has been to use Erlanger, Ky.-headquartered NUCO as a base from which to build a multimarket, multiproduct publishing and information services business, including a combination of magazine, data, newsletter, conference, trade show, Web site and book assets, delivered in print, electronic and live event form.

Insurance Advocate joins Florida Underwriter in a growing stable of regional publications at NUCO, which now publishes regionals directed to the concerns of the second- and fourth-largest U.S. insurance markets.

"Acquisition of the Insurance Advocate and its related publications is a logical expansion move for NUCO, to gain depth in the most important insurance market in the country," said Mr. Goodenough.

"Insurance is still a local business, subject to state regulation," he added. "Most insurance executives operate more locally, because their clients are within a focused market geographically. New York and the entire tri-state area, with its many unique characteristics, have been well served for 114 years by the publication that is today the Insurance Advocate."

"Insurance Advocate is an institution whose stewardship requires particular dedication and a special sense of service to the industry, to its professionals, to its venerable past, and to its promising future," said Stephen Acunto Sr., president of CINN Worldwide Inc. and publisher of the Insurance Advocate from 1985-2004.

"After 20 years as both a publisher and curator, working with the dean of insurance editors, Manny Levy, I am fully comfortable and confident that the team Andy Goodenough has assembled, led by Stephen Acunto Jr., will sustain the Insurance Advocate's vital, crisp, news that stays news' identity well into the future," added Mr. Acunto, who created the Insurance Advocates successful spinoffs Crackdown! and Financial Services Advisor.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, September 9, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.