{"id":106030,"date":"2017-08-15T08:44:49","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T08:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=106030"},"modified":"2017-09-06T10:53:56","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T10:53:56","slug":"norwegian-billionaire-buys-stake-in-johnston-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/norwegian-billionaire-buys-stake-in-johnston-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Norwegian Billionaire Buys Stake in Johnston Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Christian Ager-Hanssen, the London-based Norwegian billionaire-owner of the Swedish version of the <em>Metro<\/em> has bought a 5% share in British regional publisher Johnston Press.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Shares in the company, which has been struggling with massive debt repayments, soared by nearly 20% following the news.<\/p>\n<p>Johnston Press must pay off a bond of \u00a3220 million, used to fund a significant acquisition of titles in the 1990s, by 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Ager-Hanssen believes he is in a position to help the company with the problem of the bond repayments and has lined up a number of investors who may be able to take on the debt.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the press, Ager-Hanssen said: \u2018I believe in the company and I think that they will be able to sort out the bond issue and that we can help them do that.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I think we need to move quite quickly. This is something that will happen over the next six months.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Despite owning the Swedish edition of the <em>Metro<\/em>, Ager-Hanssen does not see any strategic synergies between the two brands. Instead he hopes to increase his investment in the publisher and use it as a springboard to launch new companies in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Ager-Hanssen said: \u2018Where we are focused is actually building audience and we want to invest heavily into UK media. And we will do that. We will increase our stake in Johnston.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You can take Johnston\u2019s audience, which is 32m, or 34m, and kick-start new companies like we did in Sweden.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Johnston Press has welcomed the investment but is also keeping its cards very close to its chest regarding future plans, with a spokesperson for the publisher stating: \u2018As a major new shareholder, and with his experience, we of course welcome a conversation with Christen and a meeting has been set up.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christian Ager-Hanssen, the London-based Norwegian billionaire-owner of the Swedish version of the Metro has bought a 5% share in British regional publisher Johnston Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":106031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[350,3531,3729],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106032,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106030\/revisions\/106032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}