Can the Middle East market support an Arabic-language version of a top-shelf Western business magazine? The last one, Forbes Arabia, shut down in April of last year when its parent company, DIT Group, closed down all of its titles.
Now Al Waseet International, the Kuwait-based media company that puts out regional editions of Marie Claire and Top Gear, is preparing to fill that gap with a Middle East edition of Forbes' longtime rival, Fortune, beginning this summer. The UAE, Kuwait and Saudi will get their editions first, according to Majed Suleiman, the chief operating officer of AWI.
Interestingly, the licence that AWI bought from Fortune's parent company, Time Inc., includes rights to publish an English-language version, he said, but there are no immediate plans to capitalize on that. Probably a good bet: last year's figures from the Pan Arab Research Center showed that advertising spending in Arabic-language publications dropped far less than in English-language ones.
Fortune picks up where Forbes left off
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