Our first clue was yesterday's comment by Springer's boss, from the German news agency DPA:
Axel Springer CEO Döpfner: 'The era of the old media moguls is over'
Mathias Döpfner, the head of Axel Springer, says he has ambitious plans for the German media giant to expand its foothold in the United States, even as he reviews the company's operations in its home market - including the end of printed newspapers.
Axel Springer's portfolio includes the influential German tabloid Bild, the newspaper Die Welt, and Politico, a site popular with power brokers and policy makers in Washington and Brussels. It also has a large digital classifieds business that includes jobs site StepStone and real estate-focused AVIV....
....MUCH MORE
And at Ms Kaminska's The Blind Spot property, also yesterday:
....Before we crack on with markets news and how the energy grid is going to handle this latest cold snap, I have some SML and Blind Spot news.
As of February The Blind Spot will be entering into a major collaborative deal with a mainstream news name. Woo hoo.
I can’t give you all the details yet, as they will be the ones making the announcement, but I can give a few hints about the “plan”. Let’s call them “mystery news organisation” for now....
....MUCH MORE
That's just part of the introduction to this week's Spot Markets Live Transcript (23/01/23) but could be the biggest business news in SML for the fourth week of January, 2023.
It's the old camel's nose under the tent ploy. It begins with a "collaboration" and the next thing you know they're announcing a purchase of Kohlberg Kravis' stake in the giant printing haus and Izzy is shaking things up at Business Insider (88% owned by Springer at a cool $442 million valuation).
Anyhoo, that's a week away.
But just so there's no mistaking what's happening, Markets Live had these two stories back to back:
...National Express is also up nearly 5% after winning a £880m contract to run German rail lines.
Here’s the story
The transport group’s German rail business has won €1bn contract to run the RE1 and RE11 Rhein-Ruhr-Express (RRX) lines until 2033. The Rhein-Ruhr-Express is a regional rail network in north west Germany, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on the border with Belgium and the Netherlands.
Anjuli DaviesIn AIM-news , looks like the takeover of the funeral provider Dignity has been given the green light. We wrote last week about some concerns over the price and the debt structure but looks like its biggest shareholder and former CEO has won the day.
Shares are up 8% this morning , hovering around the offer price of 550 pence a share....
