O’Reilly quits: what now for Independent?

Irish tycoon Sir Anthony O'Reilly's decision to retire as the chief executive of Independent News & Media (INM) does not bode well for the future of the Independent and Independent on Sunday newspapers.

The acquisition of the loss-making and circulation-dropping titles was down to the Irishman, who some say treated them as his personal plaything. However, his son, Gavin O'Reilly, who was announced as his successor yesterday, is said not to have the desire to be a newspaper magnate. He, they say, only looks at the balance sheet, and that shows a loss of circa £10m a year.

O'Reilly will formally retire as chief executive and as a director of the board on May 7, his 73rd birthday, but his son is now effectively in charge and already there is talk of further cuts at the paper - 90 staff, 60 of them editorial, have already been pruned - in order to make it attractive to potential buyers.

The papers have already been forced to give up their Docklands home and take space at the offices of the Daily Mail group in Kensington and speculation has been rife that the newspaper group has been secretly up for sale for months. At one point Zac Goldsmith, the son of the late financier Sir James Goldsmith, was said to be interested. A more credible buyer would be Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail & General Trust, which recently sold another loss-making title, the London Evening Standard, to the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

Gavin certainly has to do something to help INM, which also owns the Irish Independent, out of the financial abyss it is facing. Its share price continues to be battered on the Dublin stock exchange where it closed on Thursday at just 10 cents compared with a year high of 2.43.

According to insiders, O'Reilly Jnr says the Independent "has a future". Question is, who with?
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