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FEATURE 

Launch of Businessweek country reports

The inaugural edition of Bloomberg Businessweek’s special country reports series, is a showcase of the new global proposition, writes Christoph Gerth, Bloomberg Businessweek’s regional director.

By Christoph Gerth

The first in a series of special reports on leading industrial countries has been published this week, with a focus on Germany as it celebrates the 20th anniversary of the German Reunification.

The report delves deep into the marriage of East and West Germany, providing an insight into Europe’s economic powerhouse and its role in the wider global economy. It features multiple stories, infographics and interviews with key players, and includes articles on Chancellor Angela Merkel and a Q&A with Siemens CEO, Peter Loscher.

For us, the new series of country reports displays our combined strength following Bloomberg’s purchase of Businessweek in 2009. Bloomberg brings innovation and scale to Businessweek’s insight and depth. Like Germany, we have been part of our very own successful merger.

With 60 journalists in six offices, Bloomberg Businessweek has more journalists in Germany than any other international media owner which makes a report on Germany both logical and timely.

Globally we have more than 2,300 news and multimedia professionals in 146 bureaus across 72 countries. Our editorial is driven by locally-based journalists living and working in the countries and cities they are covering.

As such, Bloomberg Businessweek is uniquely placed with the scale and resource to bring readers rare access to business and political leaders of these leading countries as the series continues.

The objective of the country reports is to bring our weekly global audience of over 5 million readers extraordinary context, perspective and strategic insight to make smarter, faster and more informed business decisions.

With further reports planned to follow in 2011, each one will feature 8-16 pages of editorial content with coordinating coverage on Businessweek.com, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio and Bloomberg News, playing to our strength as a multi platform, international, yet local media business.

The launch of country reports continues our focus on enhancing the reader experience and signals continued investment in the title following on from the redesigned magazine, launched in April 2010.

The refreshed magazine brought expanded content, new sections and a completely retooled and enhanced navigation with the aim of creating the most compelling global business magazine.

With an average, global, weekly circulation of 900,000, the overall goal of the latest initiative is to further boost the magazine’s circulation, particularly in Europe.

And from a commercial perspective, the introduction of our country reports has created new, unique opportunities for advertisers to gain the attention of our audience of global business-decision makers through deep, richly-reported content.

We’re really excited at Bloomberg Businessweek with the launch of the country reports, demonstrating our new global proposition. Look out for more reports and innovations to follow in 2011.