Montgomery buys Dutch shares

Posted by Jan Prins on March 9, 2007 at 3:27 PM

The Dutch publisher Telegraaf Media Group has reached a provisional agreement with the British investment group Mecom of David Montgomery about the sale of their shares, a 23,9 % interest, in the regional publisher Koninklijke Wegener.

Mecom will pay € 158,9 million for the shares in a further attempt to strengthen the position on the European market. Earlier Mecom bought for about € 200 million the regional newspapers De Limburger and Limburgs Dagblad from De Telegraaf. Besides the media-investment company Mecom bought during the last two years regional newspapers in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark Poland, and Ukraine.
The Dutch Telegraaf decided to reduce the interest in regional newspapers to get more freedom to invest in multimedia activities. Companies which own more than 25 percent of the Dutch newspaper market are not allowed to be involved in commercial broadcast activities.

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