MEN Media Ltd made £37.1m loss on sale to Trinity Mirror

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MEN Media Ltd, the publisher of the Manchester Evening News

9:20 am, June 21, 2010
MEN Media Ltd made £37.1m loss on sale to Trinity Mirror

By James Chapelard

MEN Media Ltd, the publisher of the Manchester Evening News made a £35.4m loss in the year it sold its daily and weekly newspapers to Trinity Mirror Plc.

New accounts for the company, now known as GMGRM North, show it made a loss of £37.1m on the disposal of a fixed asset in the year to March 28, 2010.

Pre-tax earnings the previous year stood at £6m.

Sales in the year to March 28, 2010 fell to £56.8m from £71.5m as the group was hit by falling advertising revenues.

Accounts for parent GMG Regional Media (Holdings) Ltd, now known as GMGRM Holdings, show that in the same period a £15m investment in subsidiaries was written off.

Trinity Mirror Plc bought GMG Regional Media from Guardian Media Group Plc for nearly £45m on the very last day of MEN Media's financial year.

The acquisition included the MEN and 21 weekly newspapers but not loss making city television station Channel M.

The total consideration included the release by Trinity Mirror Plc of a 12 year print contract liability, valued at £37.4m and £4.9m in cash, resulting in a loss of disposal of £37.1m, the accounts said.

When the deal was announced in February, Trinity Mirror said it was paying £7.4m in cash on top of writing off the printing contract. The deal also include the Surrey Advertiser series of weekly newspapers, based in Guildford.

In the year the head count fell to 567 from 760 staff which meant staff costs fell to £20.4m from £28.4m the previous year.

The cost cutting helped earnings before exceptional items, tax, interest and depreciation improve to £4m from £2.69m previously.

The MEN recently announced that it was moving the bulk of its staff from its offices in Spinningfields to Oldham in Spetember this year. Trinity Mirror, meanwhile, has said it was pleased with the commercial progress of the company since the purchase.

Comments? jchapelard@crain.com