The plant, which also prints Cambridge Evening News, The Express and The Daily Star, rolled out the 60,000-run launch issue of the stitched 24pp paper from its two-tower KBA Colora press on Sunday night.

The newspaper's executive team did not consider printing in London. "There are really only West Ferry and Newsfax in London, and we haven't spoken to them," said Jens Torpe, City AM chief executive.

"Cambridge Newspapers is very well situated, just up the M11, so it has very good links into the City and Docklands."

City AM is a full-colour London-focused business tabloid that will challenge the Financial Times, printed at both West Ferry and Newsfax, for readers in the capital business community.

It is distributed from 6am at key commuter points in the business districts of the City and Canary Wharf.

Torpe said that the current pagination of 24pp was likely to increase "eventually", but said there were no specific plans at present. City AM is aiming to grow its circulation to around 100,000 by the end of the year.

He denied that the new title's launch date had been affected by this week's news of The Guardian's plans to relaunch as a Berliner next Monday (12 September).

"We knew that The Guardian was also aiming for September, but we didn't fix our date in relation to theirs," he said.

City AM is the brainchild of Torpe and managing director Lawson Muncaster, both former executives of Swedish freesheet giant Metro International.

Story by Josh Brooks