Mr. Allwood: We are a national and regional newspapers publishing business. We have a magazines and exhibitions arm to our business and we own a television cable exclusive channel in Live TV. The national newspapers consist of: 'The Mirror', which is a tabloid newspaper selling over 2.3 million copies per day; and two Sunday newspapers, 'The Sunday Mirror', which sells around 2 million copies on a Sunday, and 'The Sunday People', which sells around 1.6 million copies on a Sunday. That makes us the second largest publisher of national newspapers in the U.K. In Scotland, we then have 'The Daily Record' and 'The Sunday Mail'. 'The Daily Record' is the market leader in Scotland. It sells around 650,000 copies a day, and that gives it a huge penetration, by far the biggest penetration of any newspaper per head of population in the Western world. And the 'Sunday Mail' is the largest-selling Sunday newspaper with sales getting on to 800,000 copies on a Sunday. Those are our national newspapers. We also own 'The Racing Post', which is the newspaper for the racing population. That sells around 75,000 copies a day. In the regions, we own a number of newspapers in the West Midlands area in England, that's Birmingham and Coventry. We have the market- leading 'Evening Mail', we have 'The Sunday Mercury', 'The Coventry Evening Telegraph'. They're all very successful newspapers. And we have two major regional newspapers in Northern Ireland, 'The Derry Journal' and the Belfast 'Newsletter'. That is pretty much our newspaper portfolio. Besides the ones I've mentioned, we also have around 35 weekly and free newspapers. And on top of that we have a magazines and exhibitions division, which has a mixture of trade and consumer magazines and exhibitions. And that, together with Live TV, is pretty much the shape of the group. We've expanded in the last couple of years through buying the regional newspapers in the Midlands. They came into the camp about 18 months ago, together with the magazines and exhibitions division. The Irish newspapers came into the group over the last three years. And 'The Racing Post' also came into the group just over a year ago when we bought that to effectively replace the 'Sporting Life'. So the group has expanded quite significantly in the last three years. We've been able to do that as the finances of the company have strengthened. Obviously, Mirror was affected because it was part of the Robert Maxwell Group, and he left the company with a number of liabilities, all of which have now been eliminated. And as I said, in the last three years the group has been in a much stronger financial position to be able to move forward and make acquisitions.
Tickers included in this excerpt: MGN.L
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.

