Can Sly win her battle for survival?
Sly Bailey, a colleague of the Trinity Mirror chief executive once said, “lives for the share price”. In which case, she must be in agony. This week, after a profit warning, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People and a host of regional titles saw £100 million wiped off its market cap, sending its value down to £280 million from £1.3 billion a year ago. Profits, said Bailey, would be 10% lower than expected because of a “marked” decline in advertising revenues in May and June. She made a point of saying that Trinity Mirror may be the first media group to bring tidings of a sharp advertising downturn. Shares in Johnston Press duly fell 8.8% and Daily Mail and General Trust, owner of the Evening Standard, lost 4.9%. These were blips, however, compared with Trinity Mirror’s precipitous 28%. Also hit on the back of Bailey’s news was ITV, whose shares dipped 5.9% to 44.7p. In the City, there are those who like to highlight the similarities between ITV and Trinity Mir
