Reply #4: Metro will still be owned by the Daily Mail group [View All]

[muriel_volestrangler]

The Evening Standard is facing a combination of the industry-wide downturn in advertising, the shift of readers to the internet and a war of attrition in London with rival News International. The two publishing companies have waged a bitter loss-making battle since launching their respective free afternoon papers, London Lite and the London Paper, in 2006.

Associated Newspapers, the DMGT subsidiary that also publishes the morning fresheet Metro, launched London Lite partly to protect the Standard against the London Paper. In November it emerged that DMGT had sought a truce of some kind with News International, an offer that was rebuffed. It has instead looked at a range of radical options for the Evening Standard – which now include its sale to a cash-rich Russian businessman.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/14/russian-oligarch-alexander-lebedev-buy-london-evening-standard

So London Lite will now compete with the Evening Standard (though free, like the London Paper).