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Business News Media
Indy board stand by the UK title
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 4 September 2009
The board of Independent News & Media has resisted calls by one of its key shareholders, Denis O’Brien, to sell or close the company’s flagship UK newspaper The Independent and its Sunday sister title.
O’Brien, the company’s second biggest shareholder, has been increasingly vocal in his distain for the Indy, insisting the company should offload its struggling British title and concentrate on its newspaper businesses in Ireland and South Africa. But the company’s CEO, Gavin O’Reilly, who took over from his father Tony O’Reilly earlier this year, remains committed to the UK paper, as his father did before him. The O’Reilly family control just under 30% of INM’s shares.
O’Reilly’s board argued that selling off The Independent at this time would be costly, and that it would hinder efforts to restructure the group’s finances. Despite retaining board support for the Indy, the O’Reilly clan haven’t completely won the war with O’Brien, who is expected to call an Extraordinary General Meeting to try and persuade other shareholders to demand the firm’s UK title be dropped.
There has been much speculation in UK media circles that the Independent will be the first of the major daily national newspapers to bite the dust as the industry tries to tackle the challenge of the advertising recession coupled with the threat of all that free news content online.
There has been talk of one of the other newspaper groups buying the title for a nominal sum, in particular Daily Mail owners Associated Newspapers, who do not currently have an interest in a broadsheet title. Such a deal would be aided by the Independent’s recent move into the Mail’s London office complex. But its debatable if Associated, or any other UK newspaper group, could really afford to take on the Indy’s debts and liabilities. Some reckon only a billionaire businessman interested in owning a national newspaper mainly for vanity reasons could be persuaded to take the Indy on.
If O’Brien does get his way and the Indy does close it could have an interesting psychological impact on the UK newspaper industry, which is already only just surviving. Some reckon once the Indy goes, the Express and one of the Scottish dailies could follow soon after.
Or perhaps Rupert Murdoch’s efforts to turn the Sunday Times website into a subscription service will work, and other newspaper groups will follow suit, allowing the newspaper industry to see another day without any major casualties. Perhaps.
