{"id":5026,"date":"2013-03-10T20:11:24","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T02:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5026"},"modified":"2013-03-10T20:11:48","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T02:11:48","slug":"exclusive-bbc-selling-lonely-planet-to-kentucky-cigarette-billionaire-brad-kelley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5026","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: BBC selling Lonely Planet to Kentucky cigarette billionaire Brad Kelley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/skift.com\/2013\/03\/04\/bbc-selling-lonely-planet-to-kentucky-cigarette-billionaire-brad-kelley\/\">Rafat Ali:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>EXCLUSIVE: Lonely Planet, the storied travel guidebooks publisher owned by BBC, is about to be sold, we have learned. And the buyer is a doozy: reclusive <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10000872396390444799904578050541251702834.html\">Kentucky billionaire Brad Kelley<\/a>, who spent the 1990s selling discount cigarette brands like USA Gold, Bull Durham, and Malibu, then sold the company for almost $1 billion in 2001, and parlayed that money into becoming the one of the largest land owners and conservationists in United States.<\/p>\n<p>The deal is in final stages of negotiation, and barring any big red flags that come up the last second it should be announced next week.<\/p>\n<p>The deal terms, according to our sources: Kelley will buy a majority controlling stake in Lonely Planet, and BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of BBC which bought LP, will retain a small-but-sizable stake to help maintain editorial control through current management, as well as save on inter-country taxes.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rafat Ali: EXCLUSIVE: Lonely Planet, the storied travel guidebooks publisher owned by BBC, is about to be sold, we have learned. And the buyer is a doozy: reclusive Kentucky billionaire Brad Kelley, who spent the 1990s selling discount cigarette brands like USA Gold, Bull Durham, and Malibu, then sold the company for almost $1 billion [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5027,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5026\/revisions\/5027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}