The publisher of UK middlebrow newspaper, the Daily Mail, is mulling a £700 million ($1.3bn, €1bn) bid for the about-to-be merged GWR and Capital radio companies, currently valued at £300m and £330m respectively.
Daily Mail and General Trust has a 29.9% stake in GWR, which will be diluted to fifteen per cent of the merged GCap Media group.
Says DMGT finance chief Peter Williams: "Fifteen per cent is not a long-term sustainable position ... we are the only group to have invested from the start of commercial radio in this country. We've always thought radio is an interesting form ... But we are not under any pressure to do anything. We are highly supportive of the merger and of the management."
GCap will be the UK's biggest radio group taking up to forty per cent of national advertising in the medium.
DMTG has a successful radio business in Australia and analysts believe the two companies would be a good fit. However, any merger would test current cross-media ownership regulations.
Data sourced from mad.co.uk; additional content by WARC staff
