After bringing the breaking news, elaborate analyses and industry events to participants in FX markets for more than two decades, Profit & Loss today announced about its operations’ shut down.
Founder & CEO, Julie Ros said the Covid-19 lockdown has been one of the key killers. It has put the company’s international events business in an untenable position, and it was unlikely that it would recover to pre-crisis levels.
She said the magazine always enjoyed a strong readership even in tough times, but measures taken to slow the spread of COVID-19 have wrecked many businesses and in general disrupted the industry in unprecedented ways.
“Profit & Loss has weathered many storms over the past 21+ years, including the tech bubble burst in 2001-2002, the depressed market environment following 9-11, and the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, but the current and ongoing global pandemic has caused challenges to our international events business that are outlasting our ability to continue operations,” said Ros.
Because getting delegates under one roof right now is a huge challenge, many organizers delayed their conferences until next year. Others, including Profit & Loss, looked to different ways of continuing business as usual. The major solution was turning to virtual events and online gatherings. Apparently, this was not without its challenges. In some places, none of it was enough.
Even with the fact that many sponsors liked the idea to collaborate, network with their potential customers online, it does not mean that organizers' revenue will be enough to break even or fully pay the bills.
For Profit & Loss’ part, Julie Ros further elaborated on this situation, outlining how an industry dedicated to bringing people together in enclosed spaces was crippled by the global pandemic.
“As our regular readers know, when we were unable to hold our in-person events this year, we shifted into a virtual environment. While these proved popular – each event had between 200-600+ registrants – as a small, independent firm, the much lower revenue base of virtual events just can’t sustain the business going into 2021 with no end in sight for the pandemic. With such uncertainty about the future ahead, the company is closing on October 31.”
Advertising Was One of the First Things to Go
Julie Ros founded Profit & Loss in 1999, which until today has published a print magazine twice a year, operated online news and events brand, as well as several other titles. While running two associated entities and managed a team located across the UK, US and Australia, Julie additionally launched several publications both print and online.
During her lengthy career as a journalist covering FX markets since 1989, she developed relationships with senior executives at the international banks, investment firms, exchanges, central banks and regulatory agencies.
For over two decades, Profit & Loss has provided coverage of both the buy and sell sides of FX and recently expanded its coverage to include Cryptocurrencies . Profit & Loss holds regular annual conferences in London, New York, Chicago, Scandinavia, Singapore and Latin America, as well as workshops for the HFT and fund management sectors and free audio webinars on a variety of industry topics.
However, in horrible times like these, it is hard to overstate the impact of Coronavirus on the sector as many business models simply cannot withstand the new reality. In the absence of revenue streams form events, much of financial media had no choice but to be heavily reliant on advertising. But, as the pandemic coincided with, and was actually a trigger for an economic downturn, advertising was one of the first things to go, being seen by many in these terrible times as a redundant spend.
