Sandie Seward
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500 more jobs at Daily Mail.Tumbling advertising revenues cut pre-tax profits by almost a half at Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), the publisher of the two national titles and a raft of local papers, in the first half to March 29.
As a consequence, the company has stepped up its cost-cutting programme and raised the number of job cuts from a previously announced 1,000 to 1,500. But a spokesman said the "vast majority" of the job losses had already taken place.
The profit before tax was £77 million, against £144 million, before one-off charges and write-offs, including £49 million to cover reorganisation and redundancies at the newspapers and financial publisher Euromoney and a £179 million write-down on the value of businesses acquired in recent years. These technical factors take the headline pre-tax loss to £239 million.
The company now says it plans cost cuts of £150 million, up from a previously announced figure of £100 million. In March, it announced another 500 redundancies at its regional titles, bringing the number of job losses there to 1,000. DMGT now says the number of jobs cut across the group will be 1,500.
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