Sententia, the newest iteration of Vertical Markets, is looking to sell off a series of trade magazines on which marketplaces focussing on science, electrical contracting, government procurement, electrical retail and veterinary business were based.
The company's chief executive officer, Willy Masson, said the titles had become "non-core", and were up for sale. "What we are now is a new IT services company operating in certain specialised areas within the legal entity that was Vertical Markets," Masson said.
"The business publications operate as Vertical Market Operations, and are continuing to operate quite profitably," Masson said. "There are still about 25 people working on the publications."
While he said they were talking to a number of interested parties, Masson declined to reveal the details.
Vertical Markets was launched in 2000, backed by venture capital from Allen & Buckeridge and headed by former OzEmail chief executive David Spence.
However, according to Allen & Buckeridge company secretary Avron Newstadt, it became clear the business model was not going to be a success up to 18 months ago.
"In the light of the unsuccessful attempt to launch the B2B business portals, the remnants of the company now consists of five different trades titles, and a separate IT consulting arm," Newstadt said.
Faced with an unproductive multi-million dollar investment, Allen & Buckeridge opted to buy an enterprise IT consultancy arm from eServ Global to integrate into the Web development arm of Virtual Markets in April this year.
The company replaced Spence with Masson, who oversaw the metamorphosis from company publishing to IT services.
