DMGT and Yattendon Group’s respective publishing arms have merged to form Local World, which launched in November 2012 as a joint venture between the two publishers and Trinity Mirror. Local World announced that the acquisitions were completed on 30 December 2012.
The business, estimated to be worth £100m, groups the two publishers' 110 titles, including 16 daily newspapers, Bristol and East Midlands’ Metros, 36 paid weekly titles and 40 free weekly publications.
It has been launched with a focus on offering consumers news across a variety of media formats, and offers 63 local websites including the thisis.co.uk online news portals dedicated to regions across the UK.
Meanwhile, Trinity Mirror confirmed that it had completed its £14.2m transaction in return for a 20% share in Local World on 7 January, in line with plans announced as the publshing began trading.
Trinity Mirror CEO Simon Fox and finance director Vijay Vaghela sit on Local World's board as unremunerated non-executive directors.
Fox said: "Alongside our continued focus on the creation of One Trinity Mirror, our investment in Local World reinforces our commitment to local media and enables us to participate in a compelling business opportunity with the consolidation of two strong local media businesses.
"In addition, the investment builds on Trinity Mirror’s existing commercial services for the provision of contract printing and national advertising sales to Northcliffe. We look forward to working with the Local World team."
Local World chief executive Steve Auckland commented: "This is the start of an exciting journey for everyone at Local World and a pivotal moment for local media.
"I’m looking forward to us building on our existing strengths, transforming our products and services, and ensuring we are the one-stop-shop for local content and commerce."
At a press conference to mark the creation of Local World in November, he said he "didn’t envisage" newspaper closures or further moves from daily to weekly publications, and ruled out merging daily titles to become larger regional titles as the focus of the business is fixed on "local news, local content and local management".
Local World chairman David Montgomery, founder of newspaper and media acquisitions business Mecom Group, added that the company would be purely content and sales led with no "elaborate physical infrastructure" or printing presses to maintain.
He said: "We are leaving behind the industrial baggage of print. We’re going to stop the trend of cost reduction for the sake of cost reduction in the regional newspaper business. We’re going to grow the business."
He said local publishing would survive for "generations to come" as the mechanism of distribution would change, but print would still have its place, adding "we haven’t lost faith in print".
