Highline Media Buys Insurance Conferences
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 5/8/2006
Highline Media subsidiary Natl. Underwriter has acquired the Conference Group to expand its portfolio of events serving the insurance industry.
The Conference Group puts on the 18-year-old Annual Executive Conference for the Property-Casualty Insurance Industry, set for Nov. 16–17 at New York's Metropolitan Club; and the 17-year-old Annual Executive Conference for the Life Insurance Industry, scheduled at the same venue Nov. 14–15.
The events will become part of Natl. Underwriter's insurance conference division, which will be headed by Jim Keefe, Natl. Underwriter senior vice president and managing director.
Natl. Underwriter produces the ACE Claims Conference & Exposition, set for June 12–14 at the New Orleans Marriott; the California Insurance Fraud Symposium, scheduled Oct. 23–25 at the Torrance (Calif.) Marriott; and the Life Insurance Sales Mastery Forum, Sept. 27–29 at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta.
The Conference Group's Deborah Slott, who founded and still organizes the events being acquired, will join Natl. Underwriter as director of executive events. Slott and her team will remain based in New York, and work on launching new events.
"We are extremely excited to add these two premier events to our growing conference portfolio," stated Highline President and CEO Andrew Goodenough, former president of Thomson's financial publishing and conferences group.
Highline Media, backed by private-equity firm Spire Capital and several banks, in October 2003 acquired Natl. Underwriter, an Erlanger, Ky.-based publisher that was established in 1897.
Since then, in addition to the recent conferences, Highline has acquired two magazines serving the financial and insurance industry. The company intends to expand into a business-to-business producer of magazines, newsletters, conferences, tradeshows, Web sites and books.
