John Veronis, Who Helped Start Psychology Today, Dies at 93

Over the next decade, the firm arranged the sale of Diamandis Communications, which published Women’s Day and Car and Driver, to Hachette Publications for $712 million; Details, the fashion magazine, to Condé Nast Publications; and Walter Annenberg’s Triangle Publications, the owner of TV Guide and Seventeen, to Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation for $3 billion.

“John Veronis was very much the entrepreneur and outward-facing partner, with many key relationships with the important media leaders and owners from around the world,” said Jeffrey Stevenson, managing partner of what is now Veronis Suhler Stevenson, which is no longer involved in media but invests in information, business services, health care and education industries.

The firm was also involved in the sale of Capital Cities’ television station in Buffalo and the acquisition of two TV stations by the Telemundo Group, the operator of Spanish-language networks that is now part of NBCUniversal.

In 1990, Mr. Veronis helped broker the merger between two nascent satellite services in Britain — Mr. Murdoch’s Sky Broadcasting and British Satellite Broadcasting, which had accumulated total losses of more than $1.5 billion in a short time — by easing tensions between Mr. Murdoch and Peter Davis, the chief executive of Reed International, a key British Satellite shareholder.

“The two men were not just fierce competitors,” Mr. Veronis wrote in his memoir, “they despised each other.”

During dinner at Claridge’s in London, Mr. Veronis wrote, he advised the rivals that if they continued to compete, “they were doomed to fail.”

The merger, announced in November 1990, created British Sky Broadcasting, also known as BSkyB. Mr. Veronis earned $1 million from Mr. Murdoch — a cut-rate fee, Lauren Veronis said in a phone interview, “because Rupert was busted.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/business/media/john-veronis-dead.html