Trinity Mirror

Trinity Mirror plc
Public
Traded as LSE: TNI
Industry Publishing
Founded 1903
Headquarters One Canada Square
Canary Wharf, London, England
Key people
 David Grigson (Chairman of the board), Simon Fox (CEO)
Products National and regional newspapers, magazines
Revenue £636.3 million (2014)
£98.6 million (2014)
Profit £81.6 million (2014)
Number of employees
 4,300 (2015)[1]
Subsidiaries Local World
Website www.trinitymirror.com

Trinity Mirror plc is the largest British newspaper, magazine and digital publisher after purchasing rival Local World for £220 million, in October 2015. It is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers as well as the national Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record. Since purchasing Local World in November 2015, it has gained 83 print publications. Trinity Mirror's headquarters are at Canary Wharf in London. Listed on the London Stock Exchange, it is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index.

History

The Daily Mirror was launched by Alfred Harmsworth (Viscount Northcliffe) "for gentlewomen" in 1903.[2] The company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange on 2 December 1953.[3]

In 1958 the International Publishing Company (IPC) acquired Mirror Group Newspapers, but IPC was in turn taken over by publishing giant Reed International in 1970.[4] In 1984 Pergamon Holdings, a company owned by Robert Maxwell, acquired the Daily Mirror[2] from Reed International. The Company was relisted as Mirror Group in 1991.[5]

The company went on to buy Scottish & Universal Newspapers in 1992, and in 1997 it acquired the Birmingham Post and Mail.[2]

Trinity Mirror was formed in September 1999 as an acquisition by Trinity International plc, a company formed in 1985 which was previously called the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo (LDPE). In a shrewd move, the LDPE created a new "Holding" company, based in Chester, moving from Old Hall Street in LIverpool where the LDPE was based. Effectively Trinity Holdings devolved from the LDPE and by distancing itself from its Liverpool flagships it made a statement of ambition and intent.

Trinity Mirror was formed when the national titles were bought by Trinity International PLC. Trinity was a company which evolved from the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo which owned newspaper titles in Canada and the US at the time, as well as interests in paper mills in Canada. In the early 1980s, it was suggested that the Press Association should be floated on the market. It turned out that the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo had a substantial historic share holding in PA, which resulted in a £70m windfall.

The previous business strategy of the Liverpool operation was to have control over the complete process of newspaper production. Hence it bought paper mills in Canada, owned its own newspaper distribution company and even went as far as buying up newsagents across Merseyside branded as "Ricafeg" which proved to be a disaster.

The shareholders appointed David Sneddon as Chief Executive and he divested the company of all interests other than producing newspapers. At the time the Liverpool Echo, despite the prevailing economic conditions on Merseyside was considered to be one of the most profitable newspapers in the UK. This cannot be verified independently because the company was adept at concealing its profit centres. The only verification is from the writer of this passage who was there at the time and the subsequent expansion of the business built upon the Echo's profitability.

After the successful sale of Canadian and US assets, the company then demerged from the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo and created a parent company called "Trinity International Holdings" and based itself in Chester.

From there the company, which was cash-rich, went on to buy out many regional newspaper groups. Many of these deals were subject to Monopolies and Mergers scrutiny.

As part of this business purchasing strategy they eventually acquired the Daily Mirror group, and as this was a major national title, the company renamed itself as "Trinity Mirror." During 2005 the company introduced a number of measures to manage discretionary spending more carefully, some of which attracted press attention.[6]

In 2007 the company sought to sell a number of titles: the Reading Chronicle was sold to Berkshire Media Group[7] and 25 Trinity Mirror South titles were sold to Northcliffe Media.[8] On 1 October 2007 it was announced that the sale of the Racing Post had been completed: the entire sale process had raised £263 million.[9]

In September 2008 the company announced that it would be closing the printing plant in Liverpool after 154 years of printing in the city, and transferring the work to Oldham.[10]

In February 2010, Trinity Mirror acquired the regional M.E.N. Media and S&B Media divisions of the Guardian Media Group, containing 22 local titles across Northern England and in Surrey and Berkshire; this includes the Manchester Evening News and Reading Evening Post.[11]

In March 2010, Trinity Mirror stated that it will end its bout of staff cuts and newspaper closures. The announcement came as the company reported pre-tax profits of £72.7m for 2009, exceeding analysts expectations.[12]

In January 2012 it was announced Trinity Mirror acquired Communicator Corp, a digital communications company specialising in email and mobile communications for £8m.[13]

In August 2013, Trinity Mirror announced its partnership with whocanfixmycar.com, a portal connecting motorists nationwide with trusted local garages and mechanics.[14]

In June 2014, Trinity Mirror transitioned its online bingo software from Dragonfish to Virtue Fusion from Playtech for its group of bingo brands.[15]

In November 2015 Trinity Mirror purchased Local World, a major stakeholder in local news titles, from DMGT. Local World had been formed by former Trinity chief exec David Montgomery in 2012 to consolidate all DMGT's local newspaper holdings other than the Metro, expanding their holdings while streamlining production, to make the group more saleable. Its 115 titles are formed primarily by those of Harmsworth's historic Northcliffe Newspapers Group, alongside other smaller purchases made by DMGT and Local World subsequently, including the 2007 purchase from Trinity. The purchase increases Trinity Mirror's local circulation by around 50%.

Phone hacking

In January 2011, former MP Paul Marsden announced that he was considering taking legal action against Trinity Mirror, over alleged phone hacking. He said he believed he may have been a victim of hacking by a journalist working for a Trinity Mirror title in 2003. At that time, a number of phone hacking allegations had been made against the News of the World, but Marsden’s allegation was the first specific claim to be made against another newspaper.[16]

On 24 September 2014, Trinity Mirror admitted for the first time that some of its journalists had been involved in phone hacking.[17][18] It admitted liability and agreed to pay compensation to four people who had sued for the alleged hacking of voicemails (entertainer Shane Richie, soap actresses Shobna Gulati and Lucy Benjamin and BBC creative director Alan Yentob). The four also received an apology. Trinity Mirror also announced that it had earlier settled six other phone hacking claims in relation to former England football manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, footballer Garry Flitcroft, actor Christopher Eccleston, showbusiness agent Phil Dale, Richie's wife Christine Roche and Abbie Gibson, a former nanny of David and Victoria Beckham. As of September 2014, a further 19 claims were registered at the High Court and another 10 claimants had indicated they would bring proceedings against Trinity Mirror. The company is thought to have set aside £8m to £9m to settle phone hacking claims and legal costs.[19] Other reports claimed that the number of victims could be much higher, with Dr Evan Harris, associate director of the pressure group Hacked Off describing the revelations as: “… just the tip of a very big iceberg”.[20] Following the admissions, shares in the group closed at 178.75p, down by 1.24 per cent.[21]

On 6 November 2014, Graham Johnson, who worked at the Sunday Mirror between 1997 and 2005 and had served as the paper’s investigations editor, became the first Mirror Group Newspapers journalist to admit to phone hacking when he pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court. The trial began after he had contacted the police voluntarily in 2013. A spokesman for Trinity Mirror said the company would not be making a comment on Mr Johnson's conviction.[22]

On 13 February 2015, Trinity Mirror published a public apology to "all its victims of phone hacking" on page two of The Daily Mirror.[23] It also set aside a further £8m to cover both the cost of settling future phone hacking compensation payments to victims yet to come forward and the associated legal expenses. This brought the total set aside by Trinity Mirror in relation to phone hacking to £12m.[24] The statement of apology said that the “unacceptable intrusion […] was unlawful and should never have happened, and fell far below the standards our readers expect and deserve”. It added that the practice had “long since been banished from Trinity Mirror's business and we are committed to ensuring it will not happen again”. The same apology was printed in the following editions of the Sunday People and Sunday Mirror.[24]

A hearing at the High Court in London heard on 3 March 2015 that one Mirror group journalist had hacked the phones of some 100 celebrities every day and that 109 stories had been published about just seven claimants. The hearing was to consider "representative claims" in order to establish damages guidelines for subsequent cases. The BBC reported that in MGN’s written argument Matthew Nicklin QC had said that it had published a public apology to all hacking victims and its parent company Trinity Mirror had sent private letters of apology to the eight claimants. Nicklin added: "The claimants now face trial secure in the knowledge that MGN has admitted liability, and has also publicly and privately apologised to them and expressed regret at what certain of its former employees did in the past”.[25]

On 21 May 2015 damages totaling nearly £1.25m were awarded to eight people as the result of phone hacking by Mirror Group journalists, including actress Sadie Frost (£260,000) and ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne (£188,250). Other damages recipients included soap opera actors Shane Richie (£155,000), Shobna Gulati (£117,500) and Lucy Benjamin (real name Lucy Taggart, £157,250), as well as BBC creative director Alan Yentob (£85,000), TV producer Robert Ashworth (former husband of Coronation Street actress Tracy Shaw, £201,250) and flight attendant Lauren Alcorn (former girlfriend of footballer Rio Ferdinand, £72,500).[26]

The awards were larger than had been made previously in phone hacking cases. Mr Justice Mann explained this, saying: "The length, degree and frequency of all this conduct explains why the sums I have awarded are so much greater than historical awards. People whose private voicemail messages were hacked so often and for so long, and had very significant parts of their private lives exposed, and then reported on, are entitled to significant compensation”.[26]

Following the announcement of the damages awards, Mr Justice Mann was told that a further 10 cases had been settled and that approximately another 70 other claims were outstanding. The Mirror Group said it would consider whether to seek permission to appeal against the size of the damages, but increased the money allocated to deal with phone hacking claims from £12m to £28m.[26]

Operations

Newspapers

For more details on this topic, see List of Trinity Mirror titles.

Trinity Mirror's printing division, Trinity Mirror Printing Ltd,[27] is located at nine press sites throughout the UK, printing and distributing thirty-six major newspapers for the UK, including the Daily and Sunday Mirror, The People, the Daily Record (in Scotland), and other contract titles including titles for the Guardian Media Group.[28] Trinity Mirror also owns a number of local titles in Northern England and in Surrey and Berkshire, after acquiring a number of titles from the Guardian Media Group in 2010. For a list of local and national titles owned by Trinity Mirror, see List of Trinity Mirror titles.

Digital

In 2013, Trinity Mirror launched the content websites UsVsTh3m and Ampp3d on an experimental basis. UsVsTh3m was a website similar to BuzzFeed focused on quizzes and Flash games, edited by B3ta founder Rob Manuel and running the Tumblr platform. Ampp3d focused on data journalism[29][30] and used the WordPress platform. Both websites were closed down in 2015.[31]

Subsidiaries

References

  1. ↑ Our Company. Trinity Mirror. Retrieved 17 April 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Trinity Mirror: History Archived 14 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ London Stock Exchange. London Stock Exchange (2 December 1953).
  4. ↑ IPC Media website. Ipcmedia.com.
  5. ↑ Maxwell Scandal Timeline. Accountancyage.com.
  6. ↑ Trinity Mirror "cancels Christmas"
  7. ↑ Trinity Mirror sells Berkshire Regionals for £10m. The Guardian (19 July 2007).
  8. ↑ Fenton, Ben. (7 July 2007) Northcliffe buys 25 titles from Trinity Mirror. Financial Times.
  9. ↑ Edgecliffe, Andrew. (1 October 2007) Trinity Mirror calls halt to disposals. Financial Times.
  10. ↑ Up to 100 jobs at risk as Trinity Mirror plans to close Liverpool print plant. The Guardian (5 September 2008).
  11. ↑ "Manchester Evening News sold by Guardian Media Group". Manchester Evening News. 9 February 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-09.
  12. ↑ "Trinity Mirror to stop cutbacks". 4 March 2010. Retrieved 5 March 2010.
  13. ↑ "Trinity Mirror buys email and mobile firm Communicator Corp for £8m".
  14. ↑ "Home - Trinity Mirror plc".
  15. ↑ "Trinity Mirror Transitioning to Virtue Fusion". bingoreviewer.co.uk. 6 June 2014.
  16. ↑ BBC News (January 2011). “Phone-hacking: Review to consider new claims”, BBC News, 24 January 2011. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  17. ↑ Gallivan, Rory and Zekaria, Simon (September 2014) “Trinity Mirror Admits Liability Over Phone Hacking”, Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014
  18. ↑ Sweney, Mark (September 2014). “Trinity Mirror faces up to the financial fallout as phone-hacking claims mount”, The Guardian, 28 September 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  19. ↑ BBC News online “Phone-hacking: Trinity Mirror admits liability”, BBC News online, 24 September 2014 (Retrieved 29 September 2014)
  20. ↑ Cusick, James and Milmo, Cahal (September 2014). “Trinity Mirror 'could face hundreds of claims' from phone hacking victims”, The Independent, 24 September 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  21. ↑ Smith, Oliver (September 2014). “Trinity Mirror admits phone hacking liability”, City A.M., 25 September 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  22. ↑ "Ex-Sunday Mirror reporter Graham Johnson admits phone hacking". BBC News. 6 November 2014. Retrieved 6 November 2014.
  23. ↑ Plunkett, John (13 February 2015). "Daily Mirror prints apology to phone-hacking victims". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
  24. 1 2 "Phone-hacking: Trinity Mirror apologises to its victims". BBC News. 13 February 2015. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
  25. ↑ "Phone hacking 'rife' at Mirror Group Newspapers". BBC News. 3 March 2015. Retrieved 3 March 2015.
  26. 1 2 3 "Phone hacking: Celebrities win damages from Mirror Group". BBC News. 21 May 2015. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
  27. ↑ Trinity Mirror Print Division
  28. ↑ Oldham's Economic Profile - Printing & Publishing, oldham.gov.uk. Retrieved 29 March 2007.
  29. ↑ Mark Sweney. "Trinity Mirror builds on the success of UsVsTh3m with launch of Ampp3d". the Guardian.
  30. ↑ "Ampp3d: News, facts and stats". Daily Mirror. Trinity Mirror.
  31. ↑ Jasper Jackson. "Trinity Mirror's UsVsTh3m and Ampp3d thought to be facing axe as jobs set to go". the Guardian.
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