The Rothermere family is on the verge of a £400m pensions agreement that will pave the way for it to delist the publisher of the Daily Mail and i newspapers after nearly a century as a public company.
Sky News has learnt that Rothermere Continuation Limited (RCL) is close to agreeing a deal with trustees of the Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT)’s three pension schemes – the final obstacle to taking the group private.
The development could be announced within days.
If confirmed, it would lead to Britain’s biggest-selling daily newspaper – among titles subject to circulation audits – returning to fully private ownership.
Precise details of the pension agreement were unclear on Monday evening, but are understood to involve a sum of more than £400m being injected into the DMGT schemes to provide reassurance to trustees that scheme members’ interests are adequately protected.
Lord Rothermere, DMGT’s chairman and the steward of his family’s 36% stake in the company, made an indicative £810m proposal to take it private in July.
The offer was subject to three conditions: the listing of Cazoo, which floated in New York in August at a $7bn valuation, with DMGT’s 17% stake to be distributed to shareholders; the disposal of DMGT’s insurance risk arm, which was sold to Moody’s Corporation in September for £1.4bn; and the agreement of the company’s pension trustees.
Negotiations between the company and the trustees are said to have involved a number of offers, and are the main reason why a formal Takeover Panel ‘Put Up or Shut Up’ (PUSU) deadline has been extended three times.
The most recent extension, granted last week, gave RCL until November 25 to lodge a formal takeover bid.
Cazoo floated in New York in August
The Daily Mail was founded…
Source : skynews
