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Lebedev restarts talks for the Independent
Russian oligarch and Evening Standard owner Alexander Lebedev eyes national newspaper
Russian oligarch and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev, who earlier this year bought the London Evening Standard, has restarted negotiations to buy the Independent.
Discussions with the British newspaper's Irish publisher, Independent News & Media (INM), were put on hold in the summer as it underwent financial restructuring. That process has now been completed and the struggling paper's owners have also implemented a series of cost-cutting measures at the Independent and its sister title, the Independent on Sunday.
The publications made losses of more than £10m last year, but INM claims the titles will break even by the end of next year.
According to the Guardian, Lebedev is "serious" about adding to his publishing empire. It quotes a source as saying: "There is confidence a deal can be done soonish."
Lebedev, who was a lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, acquired a 75 per cent stake in the Evening Standard in January. His most eye-catching move since then has been to make the London paper a freesheet.
If he does strike a deal with INM it raises the intriguing possibility of the Independent becoming Britain's first free national paper.
Whether that would be enough to save the Indie remains to be seen. Sales figures show that the paper has a circulation of less than 190,000 and has lost 14 per cent of its readers in the past year. The Sunday paper has fared even worse - its circulation has fallen more than 15 per cent to 159,000. ·
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Well, that might shake-up some of the cronies at the Indy? I had always imagined that Anderson wrote his column as a kind of parody of Sir Bufton Tufton in Private Eye... but perhaps he is really serious about his hang-'em-flog-'em-beastly-foreigner-johnny-terrorist stuff? He won't be missed. Nor will professional Blair apologist John Rentaghoul, who writes about nothing other than Blair. It would certainly make a change to have one single UK newspaper that isn't rabidly New World Order. Anyone who thought the contrary need only read Luke beastly-bolsheviks Harding in the Graun today, sucking up to his yankee masters and writing more twaddle in flat defiance of an EU Ruling that concluded that President Psychoshvili of Georgia started the Ossetian War. And Harding is mild compared to his Indy counterpart Shaun Walker, who clearly has his column dictated by David Miliband in person. I suspect Walker will be Walking himself pretty soon under a Lebedev management - and no loss whatsoever.