BWT - THE STORY SO FAR

I have actually been working on the BusinessWeek Thailand project since about two weeks after I arrived in Thailand - back in June. The company had identified the need for a globally-respected and trusted business magazine for Thailand, and asked me to go about getting it. BusinessWeek is the number one, and although we did briefly look at other titles it soon became apparent that it was the one that would work best here. After making initial contact and assessing their response, I put together a business plan which was sent to New York, the head offices of McGraw-Hill, at the start of September. In October I went to New York with two of my fellow directors, and about two weeks after that we got the news that they were happy with what we had offered. The deal was signed just before Christmas after seven weeks of negotiations regarding the wording of the license agreement. The agreement is in English and I needed to be sure, with the help of our very good (and very expensive) company lawyer that everyone understood what is required. Christmas got in the way in terms of making the news public - but now it's out in the open and we are already starting to see the interest in the title. Teresa commented earlier this week that I will have to start studying copies of BusinessWeek from now on. Actually, I haven't stopped since the end of June! And although most of my time is currently being taken up with BWT, I am already in discussions with another publisher to license another title for Thailand. I said BWT would not be the last and I mean it.