Friday 20 December 2002

Business am

It now seems that the plan to keep the paper going as a weekly has failed.

Note this:

Angus MacDonald, chief executive of the publisher of Financial News, last night blamed "Euro bureaucracy" for the deal falling through.

He said: "We wanted to buy the trade and assets of the company, but European legislation requires that any buyer of a company is obliged to keep on all staff.

"It looked like we were going to be forced to take on three times the number of staff that were needed for a weekly title."

As our friends over on Samizdata are always telling us: "the state is not your friend".