125 jobs lost as daily business paper closes

Scotland's daily business newspaper is to close on Friday with the loss of 125 jobs, it was announced yesterday.

Just two years after it was launched as the first daily publication to specialise in financial news in Scotland for more than 100 years, the publishers of Business a.m. have decided to cut their losses.

Swedish proprietor Bonnier AB Group pumped more than £20m into the title, which has a cover price of 95p, but sales have fallen to about 11,000 a day against a break-even point in the region of 25,000, despite an impressive 80 per cent of copies being sold through subscription.

Bonnier has been trying to find a backer for the title since October. However there has been a lack of interest because the move coincided with the Scottish Media Group's sale of its newspapers, including The Herald and Sunday Herald.

Bonnier yesterday said Business a.m. would have to close but that they were in "advanced talks" to sell the title to the publishers of the London weekly Financial News.

Its owner Angus MacDonald is keen to create a more "Scotland-centric" weekly publication. Although he may rehire a small number of the Edinburgh-based paper's staff, the majority of Business a.m.'s employees are expected to be made redundant.

A spokesman for Bonnier said: "The company felt it could not sustain continual losses when we have an advertising market that has very little sign of recovery."