Former Daily Mirror boss David Montgomery has stepped up his ambitions to become a European media mogul by agreeing to buy Norwegian group Orkla Media.
Mr Montgomery’s investment fund Mecom is to buy the media assets of the Orkla conglomerate.
Orkla Media is the fifth-largest media company in the Nordic area, employing 7,000 people, and has been valued by analysts at more than £700m.
Operating in newspapers, magazines, radio, television, digital media and direct marketing, Orkla has businesses in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine.
The deal is the latest in a series of acquisitions by Mecom since October, when it agreed to buy the Berlin publishing group Berliner Verlag.
Mr Montgomery followed that up in February with the acquisition of the Hamburger Morgenpost, Hamburg’s second largest daily newspaper.
In April, Mecom agreed to buy Dutch group LMG from the Telegraaf Media Groep.
An aggressive newspaper buyer in Europe is a good news for the industry.