Norwegians Buy Into Russian Top Newspaper

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Norwegians Buy Into Russian Top Newspaper

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Staff Writer Norwegian media group A-pressen said Monday it would pay at least $5 million for a blocking stake in Russian top-selling newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, which is controlled by tycoon Vladimir Potanin's Prof-Media.

A-pressen will pay Prof-Media and private shareholders $5 million for 25 percent plus one share of the newspaper immediately and up to an additional $2.5 million over a two-year period depending on the company's performance, said Reidar Karlsen, managing director of A-pressen subsidiary A-pressen Russian Media.

"It is a major step for us," Karlsen said by telephone from Oslo. "It gives us a strategic position in Russia."

The Oslo-based media group already owns stakes in newspapers in Nizhny Novgorod and St. Petersburg. It has been active on the Russian media market since 1997, when it started building, with the help of a loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the first of several printing presses in the regions. The company recently launched construction of a $3 million facility in Novosibirsk. It also owns two similar facilities already functioning in Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, once a leading and progressive Soviet newspaper, has turned into a sensationalist tabloid over the past several years while holding on to the top spot in terms of circulation, selling 780,000 copies of its daily edition and 2.8 million copies of its weekly, according to the newspaper.

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