Businessman buys rights to The Independent for just £1

London: After months of negotiations and a number of missed deadlines, the sale of The Independent newspaper to Alexander Lebedev was completed on Thursday, for a nominal fee of £1 (Dh5.50).

Independent News & Media (INM), the Dublin-based owner of The Independent and its Sunday sister title, was determined to unload the two newspapers, which lose about £1 million a month.

Two people familiar with the business said it could have cost INM £28 million to £40 million to close the two UK titles, because of long-term deals for printing and other obligations.

Talks with Lebedev have been protracted and INM had to make substantial concessions, including a promise to pay the former KGB lieutenant-colonel £9.25 million over the next 10 months.

INM said this payment was "in exchange" for Independent Print Limited, Lebedev's company, assuming "all future trading liabilities and obligations".

The sale will fuel speculation that Lebedev will make The Independent a freesheet, as he did with the London Evening Standard, which he took control of in January 2009.

But Lebedev did raise the prospect of a new financing model, announcing that he would ask philanthropists to help fund "global media projects", including The Independent and the Evening Standard.

Lebedev said he would establish The Novaya Independent Media Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, in collaboration with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader.

"We hope that other philanthropists will also be interested in maintaining quality journalism," Lebedev said.

Firm to charge for online news reports

News Corp will charge readers for online versions of its UK Times and Sunday Times newspapers from June, becoming the first media firm to test consumers' appetite to pay for mass-market news online.

Access to two new websites for the two titles will cost £1 (Dh5.5) per day or £2 for a week. Subscribers to the print versions will get free access, News Corp said yesterday.

"This is just the start," Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News Corp's British newspaper unit, said.