She magazine and Cosmopolitan Bride closed with immediate effect

Hearst Magazines UK has closed Cosmopolitan Bride and women's lifestyle title She, following the completion of a portfolio review sparked by the $651m acquisition of rival brands including Elle and Red.

In an email to staff Arnaud de Puyfontaine, the chief executive of Hearst Magazines UK, said both titles would be closed with immediate effect and that he would "endeavour" to find new roles in the expanded company for staff affected.

"As a business that believes strongly in the future of print, it is never an easy decision to close a magazine and we have looked long and hard at all options," he said. "However, we are taking this decisive action now to strengthen our overall portfolio, focusing our investment on our stronger titles and digital expansion".

He added that competition has "never been fiercer" in each of the sectors the magazines target and that we "cannot ignore those trends or the need to adapt our business accordingly".

The last issue of She magazine, which targets the highly competitve women's lifestyle sector, will come out on 16 August when the September edition hits the shelves.

The monthly title has a circulation of 144,583, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report for the six months to the end of December, making it the 65th most purchased magazine in the UK.

The title saw sales fall 3.7% year on year in the six months to the end of December and up 2% compared with the previous six months.

In contrast newly acquired rivals Elle UK and Red are considerably larger with sales of more than 200,000, while both titles recorded period-on-period and year-on-year sales increases in the latest ABC report.

Hearst is to publish the last issue of the 10-year-old Cosmopolitan Bride, a bi-monthly title, on 25 August when the October/November issue comes out.

The title ranks fourth in its sector, behind long-time stablemate You & Your Wedding, Condé Nast Brides and Hubert Burda's Wedding & Home. The title recorded a 3.7% year-on-year fall in sales in the six months to the end of December, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures.

Hearst said that the strategy would be to focus on You & Your Wedding by "blending the best of Cosmopolitan Bride into both the printed magazine and website".

"Following the acquisition of Hachette Filipacchi, we have looked at our business and made the decision to close both She and Cosmopolitan Bride to ensure our company is as robust and adaptable as possible for the future," said Meribeth Parker, group publishing director, Hearst Magazines UK.

In March Hearst acquired the Hachette Filipacchi magazine division of French media company Lagardere for $651m.

The UK part of the deal, which completed on 1 August, saw Hearst Magazines UK acquire the publishing rights to Elle, Elle Decoration and Psychologies, as well as ownership of Red, All About Soap, Inside Soap, online site Digital Spy and Sugarscape.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook