By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
Leading investors in Mecom, the European publishing group, are pushing the company to contemplate a merger with Holland's biggest newspaper publisher following a swingeing profit warning last month.
I have learnt that institutional shareholders will tomorrow hold talks with Mecom's management at which they are expected to raise the possibility of a tie-up with Telegraaf Media Groep, which owns the flagship Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
Mecom's four largest shareholders - Aviva Investors, Aberforth Partners, JO Hambro and Legal & General Investment Management - are pushing for its board to consider an array of radical options in an attempt to lift the company's ailing share price.
Between them, the quartet of institutions hold more than 50pc of Mecom's shares, making them a powerful bloc as the company thrashes out its future strategy.
A person close to the situation said that a merger with the Telegraaf publisher was only one of the potential options under consideration, while another said it was unclear whether such a combination would be permitted from a regulatory perspective.
Mecom, which listed on the stock market in 2005, was founded by David Montgomery, the former Mirror Group Newspapers boss who now heads the UK regional newspaper publisher Local World.
Having grown through a string of acquisitions across Europe, Mecom has been forced into selling some of them at basement prices in an attempt to reduce its mountainous debts. The company now has a stock market value of just over £50m.
Mecom continues to own assets in the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland, where it is the second-largest regional newspaper publisher. It announced last year that it was exploring the sale of the Dutch and Danish businesses, but progress has been laboured, and investors have expressed frustration that the company has not been able to secure attractive prices for its assets in those markets.
Last month, Mecom announced the sale of its stake in Funda, a Dutch online property operation, for just over £10m, at the same time as a profit warning wiped a third of the company's value from its share price.
One source said that the future role of Stephen Davidson, Mecom's executive chairman, was also likely to be decided in the coming weeks and may be on the agenda at Wednesday's meeting. Some investors have criticised Mr Davidson over the hiring of Tom Toumazis, who stepped down after a brief stint as chief executive last year.
A Mecom spokesman declined to comment.
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