Bob Guccione is facing a battle for control of Penthouse, the magazine he founded in the 1960s as a rival to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy.
Beate Uhse, the publicly quoted German company that owns a string of sex shops, has tabled a $62-million (£34-million) bid for General Media, which publishes the magazine.
The offer comes at a time when General Media, of which Guccione is chairman and chief executive, is seeking backing for its own reorganisation plan.
At least one other investor is also thought to be interested in developments at the American company.
General Media filed for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors last August as it struggled to compete against new, more celebrity-orientated, magazines and the increasing availability of pornography on the internet. A court is expected to decide on the restructuring plan — reported to include a deal that would keep Guccione as Penthouse’s publisher emeritus for the next 10 years — next month.
Yesterday a spokesperson for Beate Uhse confirmed the German company had made a $62-million offer. ”We have submitted an offer. There are other [competing] investors.”
”The court will decide who will get the company. It is not only a question of money, it is a question of the concept to get Penthouse into good figures again.”
Beate Uhse, which has been quoted on the German stock market since 1999, is keen to use the Penthouse name to expand its mail order business internationally.
The spokesperson said: ”Penthouse is a very, very, well known brand in the world, especially in the US. Beate Uhse is more a German brand.
”Since we came to the stock exchange we have really been looking to expand internationally. We started our own mail order business in the US in 2002, but it is really very small. It is very difficult to build up something from nothing as a European company.”
Nobody from General Media was available for comment yesterday.
Beate Uhse has about 300 shops in 13 countries as well as its mail order operation.
It was named after the former Luftwaffe pilot who founded the company in 1946. She flew planes to the front during the war and escaped in one from Berlin as the city fell. Her mother, who was one of the first woman doctors in Germany, is credited with instilling in her an open approach to sex.
She started her business by distributing information on birth control, banned by the Nazis, and set up a mail order company in 1951.
Her first sex shop opened in 1962. She died in 2001 aged 81. – Guardian Unlimited Â