Trinity Mirror in £127m deal for Express titles

THE publisher of the Daily Mirror newspaper has struck a £126.7m deal to buy a string of titles from Richard Desmond’s media empire, including the Daily Express, the Daily Star and OK! magazine.

Trinity Mirror will stump up an initial payment of £47.7m to Northern & Shell, followed by £59m between 2020 and 2023 and a further £20m in shares to the privately-owned firm.

The move marks a major shake-up of Britain’s media landscape, bringing together politically left-leaning titles like the Sunday Mirror, with more rightwing publications such as the Sunday Express.

As part of the deal, Trinity Mirror will take control of Daily Star Sunday, celebrity magazines New! and Star, and a 50% slice of the Irish Daily Star.

Trinity Mirror chief executive Simon Fox has ruled out a shift in editorial tone across the major titles, but said it would spark £20m a year in cost savings which will lead to job losses.

“The titles have separate editors and they know their readers best and have full control over the content — that will not change,” he said. “The Mirror won’t become right wing and the Express won’t be turning left wing, that would be absolutely ridiculous for us to do that. “

Mr Fox said a chunk of the cost savings would come from sharing stories across titles, with the same sport and features content being used in both the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express.

However, he said it would be “entirely inappropriate” to take the same approach with the newspapers’ political teams.

Focusing on cost savings, he said: “There will changes to both businesses over time and what we will do, as we did when we bought Local World, is to look to remove duplication. That’s why we are stronger together than we are separate. Both organisations have finance teams, HR, newspaper sales, marketing and so on. Therefore, there will be consequences for a number of jobs, but it is far too early to work out exactly how many.”

Mr Desmond, chairman of Northern & Shell, branded the deal a “transformational transaction”.

Shares in Trinity Mirror rose more than 7% in morning trading on the London Stock Exchange.