McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP - News) may reap only a nominal $1 from a sale of Business Week, according to people familiar with the 80-year-old financial magazine's record of losses.

The publisher had appointed Evercore, the boutique investment bank, to sell the business after concluding that the title - which has a cover price of $4.95 each - was non-core to a group that also owns the Standard & Poor's rating agency and a large educational publishing business, two people familiar with the decision said.

McGraw-Hill would not comment and Evercore did not return calls for comment, but auctioning a predominantly print business that is heavily exposed to financial advertisers during a media recession will be challenging.

Business Week's advertising revenues fell by a third to $77.8m in the first six months of 2009, according to the Publishers' Information Bureau. The magazine claims circulation of 936,000 and 4.8m readers

Industry members and bankers said it was unlikely that Time Warner's Time Inc, publisher of Fortune, or Forbes would bid for a competitor while facing similar challenges themselves. Condé Nast announced it was closing Portfolio, a glossy business title, in April.

Among the few groups investing in print media, bankers pointed to Bloomberg, which has recruited new management for an aggressive expansion of its financial magazine, Bloomberg Markets, and Bonnier, which has become a top-10 US publisher through acquisitions.

Bloomberg would not comment but has little record of making acquisitions, and a Bonnier spokesman said it had always favoured niche acquisitions. A spokesman for News Corp, owner of the Wall Street Journal and Barron's, said it was not interested in Business Week.

Reed Phillips, managing partner of DeSilva & Phillips, the media-focused investment bank, said more likely buyers included financial groups such as OpenGate Capital, which bought TV Guide, Platinum Equity, the new owner of the San Diego Union Tribune, or Mansueto Ventures, publisher of Inc and FastCompany.

Platinum would not comment and OpenGate and Mansueto did not return calls.

However, the $1 headline price for which OpenGate bought TV Guide "is probably the kind of deal that would be obtainable for Business Week," Mr Phillips said. "I think they'll end up giving it away," another banker said.

As well as annual losses reputed to be in the tens of millions of dollars, any buyer would have to take on the cost of delivering subscriptions to people who have paid in advance.