Trinity Mirror to buy Daily and Sunday Express from Richard Desmond

Back in September Trinity Mirror already said that it was in talks to buy the titles, which also include Ok! magazine

The parent company of the Daily Express and Sunday Express and the Daily Star will be bought by the Trinity Mirror group for £126.7m.

In a statement on Friday, Trinity Mirror, which owns the Daily Mirror, said that it was buying all of Richard Desmond‘s Northern & Shell’s publishing assets.

The deal follows months of talks. Back in September Trinity Mirror already said that it was in talks to buy the titles, which also include Ok! magazine.

Founded in 1974, Northern and Shell launched OK! in 1993 and acquired the Express newspapers in 2000 for £125m.

A tie-up will bring left-leaning Mirror under the same roof as the Daily Express and Sunday Express, which both backed the Leave campaign in 2016’s Brexit referendum.

Analysts have in the past said that commercially synergies would make sense. The print media is grappling with a fall in print advertising revenues. A deal could lead to cost-saving.

Trinity Mirror on Friday said that it would finance the deal with existing cash as well as new shares that will be issued. It said that it would also make a one-off cash payment of £41.2m to the Northern & Shell Pension Schemes.

It said that its board believes the deal will “improve its print and digital editorial propositions by reducing duplication, sharing content and widening the breadth of editorial coverage with larger combined teams”.

It also said that the tie-up would provide advertisers and agencies with a “large, high quality audience, including a combined digital audience of 234 million monthly unique browsers” – which excludes apps.

“This deal is a really exciting moment in Trinity Mirror’s history, combining some of the most iconic titles in the UK media industry,” said Simon Fox, chief executive of Trinity Mirror. “It is good for our readers, good for our customers and good for our shareholders. Northern & Shell’s titles have a large and loyal readership, a growing digital presence and a stable revenue mix and offer an excellent fit with Trinity Mirror.”

Richard Desmond, chairman of Northern & Shell, said that the Express Newspapers and the group’s celebrity magazine titles had been a key part of the Northern & Shell portfolio for many years and that he is “immensely proud of building them into one of the largest newspaper and magazine groups in the UK”.

“Today’s transformational transaction is a logical and natural next step in the evolution and consolidation of the media sector and will create a larger and stronger platform serving all stakeholders,” he said. “In Trinity Mirror we have a great partner, who will be an excellent steward of the business going forward and I am delighted to be able to retain an ongoing interest in the combined group.”