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The largest shareholder in the owner of The Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman newspapers, National World, has approached it with a £56mn buyout offer.
Media Concierge, which owns 28 per cent of National World, has offered 21p a share for the business, a 40 per cent premium to its closing price on Thursday.
Media Concierge, controlled by Malcolm Denmark, is a direct marketing group and one of Ireland’s biggest local newspaper businesses. The company on Friday said the offer was a “highly attractive and deliverable opportunity for National World shareholders to realise their investment at a substantial premium in cash”.
National World, run by former Mirror boss David Montgomery, is also the underbidder for the Telegraph in a protracted 18-month sales process for the national newspaper. Montgomery was not immediately available for comment.
The approach will throw new doubt about whether National World will be able to compete for the newspaper again should the preferred bidder, Dovid Efune, fail to come up with the money to support his offer before exclusivity expires at the end of next week.
A former editor of Today newspaper and the News of the World, Montgomery has a reputation for ruthless cost-cutting and aggressive dealmaking.
A person close to the thinking at Media Concierge said the group had become frustrated with this approach to the newspaper group’s operations, which has resulted in running battles with unions while margins had also not improved sufficiently.
Media Concierge had already voted against the re-election of Montgomery at the last shareholder meeting, a person close to the group said, signalling its dissatisfaction with his leadership.
Montgomery acquired the Johnston Press newspapers, owner of The Yorkshire Post, The Scotsman and the Sheffield Star, in 2021 for just £10mn, to form National World.
Montgomery previously founded Local World in 2012, building up more than 100 UK regional newspaper titles. The company was sold in 2015 to Reach.
Montgomery was chief executive of Mirror Group following the death of proprietor Robert Maxwell in the 1990s, going on to set up Mecom in 2000.
Aim-listed Mecom briefly became the second-largest newspaper publisher in Europe with titles in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Poland. Montgomery announced a “planned retirement” in 2010 after a bruising period of battles with shareholders over its strategic direction.
