News

Under starter’s orders in race for Post

There is a pack of around six potential bidders for the Racing Post, according to a report in The Guardian.

Trinity Mirror, which owns the Daily and the Sunday Mirror, is selling off its profitable racing titles, along with regional titles in the Midlands, London and the south-east, including the Birmingham Post and South London Press.

The Guardian reports that when the deadline for Racing Post bids passed last week, it received 40 expressions of interest, from the likes of BSkyB and private equity groups and other publishers. Brough Scott, the editorial director of the Racing Post, appears no longer to be trying to put together a management buy-out.

The Guardian reports Scott as saying that he wants to work with whoever the successful bidder turns out to be in order to safeguard the paper’s original premise, “to inform and enthuse the betting interest”.

Scott is looking for online investment. “The project we started with Sheikh Mohammed 21 years ago was to try and make it the No1 newspaper about racing, and now making it a multi-media publisher would be the only way of taking it forward,” he says.

Trinity Mirror will open up the books on the Racing Post for the final six bidders to conduct due diligence ahead of a deadline for second-round bids in mid-May, with a price tag of around £200 million seeming likely.