THE publisher of The Economist is planning to use part of its £73 million cash pile to diversify. Financial and political magazines in the United States are believed to be prime targets.

In June, The Economist Group was outbid in the auction of Inc. and Fast Company, two titles previously owned by Gruner + Jahr. It lost out to a bid of $35 million (£19.5 million) from Joe Mansueto, the founder of Morningstar.

Bill Emmott, the Editor of The Economist, said that the group was “still interested in expanding in the US, a market we now know a lot about”.

Success would lessen The Economist Group’s dependence on its highly successful flagship title, which accounted for £166 million of the £197 million in revenues in the year to March. Over the past ten years, the circulation of The Economist has increased by 74 per cent and now stands at just over one million.

Aside from selling The Economist in the United States, the company owns CFO, a magazine aimed at financial professionals, and Roll Call, a political title. In Europe it owns a politics title, European Voice.

Half of overall circulation for The Economist comes from the United States. The company — 50 per cent owned by Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times — wants to invest to win more American advertising for The Economist.

“We sell 500,000 copies in North America, and we want advertising commensurate with that, which means taking share from Business Week, Forbes and Fortune,” Mr Emmott said.

Overall pre-tax profits were £27 million, up £3 million and at their highest level for at least five years, helped by a long period of cost-cutting in the research and conference arm, the Economist Intelligence Unit.

However, growth in turnover was just 3 per cent to £197 million, amid a modest recovery in advertising since the bursting of the dot-com bubble. “Advertising is now returning to 1999 levels,” Mr Emmott said.

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