INDEPENDENT NEWS & Media (INM) has agreed to pay £9.25 million (€10.32 million) to Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev and his family to offload of its loss-making London Independentnewspaper titles.

This sum will be paid over the next 10 months in return for Mr Lebedev assuming “all future trading liabilities and obligations”, INM said yesterday.

Mr Lebedev’s Independent Print Ltd (IPL) will pay a token £1 to INM as consideration for the London papers – the daily Independent and the Independent on Sunday – and a related website.

“The transaction will be immediately earnings accretive for INM,” INM chief executive Gavin O’Reilly said yesterday.

INM revealed that the London newspapers made an operating loss of £12.4 million in 2009 and that the value of the assets being sold was nil at the end of December 2009.

The 300 staff employed by the Independent titles in London will transfer to IPL. As part of the deal, the London papers will continue to be printed by Trinity Mirror Printing Ltd under a new five-year deal agreed with IPL.

INM said its existing financial guarantees to Trinity Mirror and the Daily Mail General Trust, (DMGT), which provides back-office services to the London newspapers, would continue.

INM will continue to have "full access" to the London Independent's editorial copy.

INM said none of the “significant punitive payments” that would have been incurred in the event of termination of the contracts with Trinity Mirror and DMGT were being “activated” by the sale.

Last year, at the height of the spat between the O’Reilly family and Denis O’Brien over INM’s future strategic direction, it was estimated that it would cost €25 million to close the London newspapers. Mr O’Brien advocated a closure of the business at the time.

INM also announced that Ivan Fallon, chief executive of its UK operation, is to retire.

Mr Fallon joined INM in 1994 and also worked for the group in South Africa.