Public limited company | |
Traded as | : |
Industry | Publishing |
Founded | 1947 |
Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
Key people
|
Scott Forbes, (Chairman) Duncan Painter (CEO) |
Revenue | £319.1 million (2015) |
£32.4 million (2015) | |
£16.1 million (2015) | |
Website | www.ascential.com/ |
Ascential plc is a British business-to-business media business specialising in exhibitions & festivals and information services. It is listed on the and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Richard Winfrey purchased the Spalding Guardian in 1887 and later purchased the Lynn News and the Peterborough Advertiser; he also started the North Cambs Echo. Sir Richard Winfrey (1858–1944) was a Liberal politician and campaigner for agricultural rights and the papers were used to promote his political views in and around Spalding, Boston, Sleaford and Peterborough. During World War II Winfrey's newspaper interests began to be passed over to his son, Richard Pattinson Winfrey (1902–1985). In 1947, under the direction of 'Pat' Winfrey, the family's newspaper titles were consolidated to form the East Midland Allied Press (EMAP): this was achieved by the merger of the Northamptonshire Printing and Publishing Co., the Peterborough Advertiser Co., the West Norfolk and King's Lynn Newspaper Co. and commercial printing sections at Rushden, King's Lynn and Bury St Edmunds.
The magazine division was founded on a hunch when the company's printing presses lay dormant between printing issues of the local papers. The staff gambled that a weekly angling publication would be a hit - and in 1953 Angling Times was born. This was soon joined by another weekly heavyweight when EMAP bought Motor Cycle News from its founder in 1956 for a hundred pounds. EMAP grew significantly in the late 1970s under the guidance of the extremely successful partnership of Sir Robin Miller and David Arculus.
In 1996 EMAP PLC agreed to sell its 65 newspaper titles, including the 300-year-old Stamford Mercury, to Johnston Press for £111 million.