Steve Weinrebe's Mode Studio

Getty Images, the worlds largest stock photography agency, has been bought today by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, according to the NY Times.

Getty has suffered in recent years from the burgeoning competition levied by low cost (or no cost, as in the Creative Commons license) photography web sites. Getty photographers, including myself, have been following the market trends with trepidation (as have Getty’s shareholders).

Time will tell what Hellman & Friedman have in store for Getty Images. This is not the first time Hellman & Friedman have bought a media company; they acquired the online ad powerhouse Double-Click in 2005, and count the advertising giant Young & Rubicam, as well as other advertising and marketing leaders and publishers such as Digitas and Axel Springer, among it’s media holdings. That might bode well for vertical integration of stock photography and video for H&A’s advertising and marketing holdings, but maybe not so well for Getty Images’ photographers if the work is bulk-discounted within the H&F family of businesses. Since the firm is not public they don’t have the constraint to make Getty Images look profitable, unless they are considering carving the stock agency’s several entities into salable segments. For now it looks like, at the least, they are handing their advertising, media, and marketing holdings an incredibly large photo library to work with, with the lions share of the royalties going right back into H&F’s coffers; smart business.
Posted by Steve Weinrebe