Guardian sells regional business to Trinity Mirror

Posted by Erina Lin on February 9, 2010 at 4:01 PM

Guardian Media Group (GMG) will cut its historic link to Manchester, announcing it will sell its regional media business to Trinity Mirror, MediaGuardian reported.

The £44.8 million deal, with £7.4 million in cash and £37.4 million Trinity Mirror is releasing GMC from a print contract, is due to be completed by March 28, SFN's sister publication, editorsweblog.org reported earlier today.

The sale involves GMG Regional Media's MEN Media, including the Manchester Evening News, 22 weeklies, a metropolitan magazine and a web network, as well as S&B Media in Surrey and Berkshire, but it does not include Channel M in Manchester and two local papers in Woking.

The sale of the Manchester Evening News seems to be a painful decision.

"The Manchester Evening News and its sister titles have made a huge contribution to the fortunes of the group for the best part of a century," GMG's CEO Carolyn McCall stated in an announcement. "We believe Trinity Mirror, as the UK's biggest regional publisher, is best placed to develop this business."

According to Trinity CEO Sly Bailey, the deal is a "perfect strategic fit" and "a further step towards our strategic goal of creating a multi-media business of real scale."

However, according to paidContent, this may be a better deal for GMG, which needs to do something to protect its core business, as the company made a £36.8 million operating loss in 2008/09, and suffered from £100,000 losses a day, wrote The Independent's Ian Burrell.