Confidential Publishing, How-Do and Place North West merge

The publisher of the Confidential online magazines – including Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and London – has announced a merger with the media industries website How-Do and the commercial property website Place North West.

The merger came into effect on Friday 11 November 2011. Staff across all the titles will be based at Quay House in central Manchester. Total staff headcount will be 32 with several further contracted freelance writers.

The publisher of Confidential, Mark Garner, and the publisher of How-Do and Place North West, Nick Jaspan, both believe there are numerous opportunities to be gained by combining resources and assets offering a broader range of services to both B2B and B2C markets.

The Confidential titles attract 188,000 unique readers a month; Place North West 40,000 and How-Do almost 50,000. In addition, Confidential titles currently have 156,000 subscribers to its email databases. How-Do has over 18,000 and Place North West around 11,000.

Garner said of the merger: "Coming together will allow us to enhance our existing titles and also develop new opportunities. Our readers will see the fruits of these new initiatives in the coming weeks and months.

"We believe that the combined group will be the North West's leading digital publisher and our unique business-to-business and business-to-consumer offering will present even greater opportunities for our commercial partners and we also intend to exploit Confidential's broader geographical reach."

Paul Unger, editor of Place North West, will maintain the same role.