Investors in Profitable, Growing Service Businesses
Gudmundsson Named CEO of Beckett Media
Will work to expand company through new products & services
Dallas, TX (January 26, 2006) – Beckett Media, the leading publisher of sports and specialty market collectible guides in the U.S., today announced that it has named Peter A. Gudmundsson, 41, as CEO. In that role, he will work with the company's senior management to expand the company's product and service offerings. Company founder and former CEO Dr. James Beckett remains as an advisor.
"Peter comes to Beckett with a wide range of publishing and online media experience," said Charles G. McCurdy, Chairman and CEO of Apprise Media LLC, which bought Beckett earlier this month. "As a publishing entrepreneur, he understands the need to manage the brand and address the needs and concerns of key audiences like collectors. At the same time, he also knows how to grow a company through internal development and complementary acquisitions."
"Beckett is a strong company with the most powerful and best-recognized brand in the sports and specialty market collectibles world," Gudmundsson said. "It has successfully made the transition to a robust online presence that addresses the needs of the collector community for immediate access to the most timely pricing information. I look forward to working with the senior management team and Jim Beckett to grow the company through new products and services that extend the value of the Beckett brand."
Gudmundsson has been owner and President of Design Guide Publishing Ltd, the publisher of the Dallas-Fort Worth Design Guide and the Austin Design Guide and Publisher of Home Improvement – Dallas, a monthly magazine he founded in 2003.
Prior to founding Design Guide Publishing, Gudmundsson was President and CEO of Jobs.com, an Internet employment services company. Before joining Jobs.com, he served successively as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer and later President of Primedia Workplace Learning, a pioneer in the field of distance learning content and services delivered via satellite television and the Internet. Earlier, Gudmundsson served as Vice President of Corporate Development for Primedia Inc. in New York. In that position, he reported to Mr. McCurdy and managed the acquisition of eleven companies with a combined purchase price of $250 million.
Prior to joining Primedia, Gudmundsson worked as the Assistant to the President and Manager of Corporate Development of Tosco Corporation, a leading independent oil refining company headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. He has worked as an investment banker in corporate finance, debt capital markets and mergers & acquisitions at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York.
A former U.S. Marine artillery and intelligence officer, Gudmundsson is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Brown University.
About Apprise Media, LLC
Established in 2004 by Charles G. McCurdy, co-founder and former President of Primedia, Inc., Apprise Media (www.apprisemedia.com) concentrates on niche media, one of the fastest-growing segments in the media industry worldwide. Apprise currently operates two strategic platforms: Apprise Business Media LLC, which includes Canon Communications LLC, a leading publisher, trade show producer, and digital media company serving advanced, technology-based manufacturing industries, including medical device, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, specialty packaging, electronics, and plastics processing; and Apprise Enthusiast Media LLC, which serves a variety of attractive consumer niche markets through Beckett Media LP and the Action Pursuit Group
About Beckett Publications
Based in Dallas, Beckett Media is the leading publisher of sports and specialty market collectible platforms in the U.S. Beckett operates Beckett.com (www.beckett.com), the leading online destination for sports collectible enthusiasts, and is the premier publisher of monthly sports collectibles magazines. Beckett, considered the world's most trusted source in collecting, currently publishes nine magazines. Its flagship title is the popular Beckett Baseball Card Monthly. The company also operates Beckett Grading Services, a leading third-party professional sports card grading service. The company was founded in 1984 by Dr. James Beckett. In the mid-1970s, while a statistics professor at Bowling Green State University, he published his first baseball card price guides as "free-upon-request" pamphlets to, in his words, "bring order out of the chaos that existed" in the baseball card industry. Those pamphlets led to annually published price guides and were the forerunners of Beckett's monthly collectibles magazines.
