Independent News & Media has agreed to sell its London regional newspapers to Archant for £62 million sterling (€89 million).
The sale emerged yesterday morning, less than a day after the Daily Mail & General Trust was given regulatory approval to buy the same assets.
Independent's UK chief executive, Mr Ivan Fallon, said the Archant deal had been clinched at 4 a.m. yesterday morning.
He said the regional papers, which generated profits of £4.3 million on sales of £17 million last year, had attracted bids from some 20 parties since a previous sale was abandoned in October.
Mr Fallon expressed "great relief" at settling a deal, describing Norwich-based Archant as "an ideal new owner".
He said the firm had won out over "a number of suitors, including private equity funds".
Archant is best known in the Republic for writing off a €1.4 million investment in the failed Dublin Evening newspaper (formerly Dublin Daily News), which ceased trading in July.
Independent has already received £52 million from privately-owned Archant for three of the five London divisions that are being sold.
The company has an option to spend £10 million on the remaining two divisions, with this transaction likely to be completed after new UK legislation on mergers comes into force on December 29th.
The transfer is unlikely to attract the competition concerns that led Newsquest's £60 million sterling offer to fall through two months ago.
Independent will add the proceeds of the UK sale to funds already raised this year within its recapitalisation programme. This programme's initial target of raising €250 million now looks to have been surpassed by some €10 million.
"We've done everything we said we'd do," said Mr Fallon.
He said the firm was also benefiting from signs of an upturn in advertising across all of its markets, with UK operations boosted by the particular success of the "compact" Independent.
Rival media publisher Trinity Mirror has meanwhile painted a mixed picture of the advertising market, with growth at local titles offsetting weakness at national papers such as the Daily Mirror.
The company said it was on track to meet its full-year expectations as group advertising revenue for the five months to the end of November rose 1 per cent over the same period a year ago. At its national titles, advertising revenues fell 5.7 per cent in the period. Regional advertising income climbed 3.9 per cent.
The trading update came a day after regional newspaper publisher Johnston Press reported higher-than-expected local advertising revenue growth, and two weeks after Daily Mail & General Trust said that advertising was on the rise.
(Additional reporting, Reuters)
