The veteran newspaperman David Montgomery is close to securing tens of millions of pounds to fund an audacious takeover of the Express newspaper titles and the celebrity magazine OK!

Sky News has learnt that Mr Montgomery, a former editor of the News of the World, asked for banks to pitch last week to secure a role in the potential purchase of Northern & Shell's media assets from the tycoon Richard Desmond.

Bank of Ireland is understood to be leading the pitch process on behalf of Mr Montgomery's vehicle, National World.

Lenders are being asked to provide debt to smooth a path for the deal, alongside prospective equity investors who would acquire shares worth tens of millions of pounds.

Mr Montgomery is said to want financing in place before the end of June.


Private equity firms such as Towerbrook Capital Partners, a former owner of Jimmy Choo, have been approached about putting money into the new venture, but some are thought to have got cold feet over Northern & Shell's pension liabilities.

Talks between Mr Montgomery, Mr Desmond and Trinity Mirror, which would hold a minority stake in National World if the takeover deal is completed, have been going on for almost six months.

Mr Montgomery, who has brought a string of media companies to the London stock market with varying degrees of success, plans to hold a sizeable stake, while Mr Desmond could own about 10% of the new company.

If completed, it would cap a remarkable comeback for Mr Montgomery to the UK's national newspaper scene following his departure from the Mirror Group in the late 1990s.

He subsequently established Mecom Group, which owned an array of local newspapers in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe, but departed in 2010 after a bust-up with shareholders.

Mr Montgomery then created the more successful Local World, a consolidation vehicle for UK regional newspapers, which he sold to Trinity Mirror.

If Trinity does participate in the National World project, it would hold a minority stake in the company and pool some back office functions, but would keep the ownership of the Daily and Sunday Mirror separate.

Mr Desmond has been a fixture in Britain's newspaper industry for 17 years, following his swoop on the Express and Star titles in a deal which aroused political opposition and criticism from journalists.

He has since extracted hundreds of millions of pounds from the business, replicating his financially successful operating model during a brief period of owning the terrestrial broadcaster Channel 5.

Mr Desmond has considered selling his publishing assets on several previous occasions, suggesting that a decision to offload control of them this time remains far from certain.

Under Mr Montgomery's plans, the new company and Trinity Mirror would be able to generate substantial cost savings by combining their back office operations at a time of continuing cost pressures across the industry.

A separate discussion involving other newspaper publishers about similar efforts to reduce costs has made little progress so far.

The latest talks mark the second time in the space of two years that Trinity Mirror's chief executive, Simon Fox, has looked at acquiring a stake in the Northern & Shell publishing assets.

Mr Montgomery could not be reached for comment on Sunday.