Arena Holdings has reversed plans to fold Financial Mail into Business Day, announcing a tie-up with an unspecified investment house that will keep the magazine’s title and digital editions intact.
The move, announced by Nwabisa Makunga, head of news and media at one of SA’s most influential media houses, preserves the cornerstone of the country’s business journalism. It could be seen as a sign of confidence in the economics of print journalism, which is grappling with fragmented digital attention and Silicon Valley giants syphoning revenue from legacy publishers.
“Arena Holdings has reached an agreement with a new investment group to partner in continuing the publication of Financial Mail. This partnership ensures the continuation of the title and the digital editions of Financial Mail, preserving its trusted relationship with readers and maintaining its respected editorial identity,” Makunga said.
“We are excited about this new chapter in the history of Financial Mail and proud to be affiliated with a partner that is as passionate about financial and business journalism in SA as we are.”
The Financial Mail came to be under Arena Holdings in 2019 when Lebashe Investment Group launched the company, which now houses all its media assets bought from Tiso Blackstar for R1.05bn. Arena’s other media assets include Sowetan, Daily Dispatch, The Herald, Business Day TV and Vuma FM.
Last month, Arena announced plans to integrate Financial Mail’s reporting muscle into Business Day from November and end the magazine in its current form at the end of this month.
Financial Mail is one of SA’s longest-running outlets for deep business journalism. A closure or absorption would have diminished long-form investigative space at a time when markets and regulators are under intense scrutiny.
The reversal buys the title time and preserves brand value, but it does not yet answer whether the magazine will return to a sustainable commercial footing.
Arena’s decision comes while several local media houses have announced retrenchments to cope with the loss of advertising revenue and troubles replacing print circulation revenue, particularly for legacy businesses, in recent years.
Associated Media Publishing, which ran titles such as Cosmopolitan, shut its doors in 2020, while Media24 closed the print editions of five newspapers, transitioning three of them into digital-only brands and putting hundreds of jobs on the line in 2024.
Daily Maverick announced in September last year it would begin a cost-reduction exercise, aiming to cut about 15% of operating costs. In the same month, Independent Media — owner of publications such as The Star, Cape Times and Isolezwe — announced retrenchments, citing essentially the same reasons as Daily Maverick about an unsustainable media industry.
Much of this has been attributed to the shift in the consumption of digital news sources due to smartphones and more affordable access to the internet.
In early 2025, the Competition Commission recommended that Google should compensate ailing traditional media houses, whose revenues have dried up over the past decade due to the rise of technology platforms and shifting consumer behaviour, with R300m-R500m annually for three to five years.
With Mudiwa Gavaza
