Rupert Murdoch has written down the worth of The Solar newspaper to zero in response to a dramatic fall in print promoting revenues.
The fitting-wing tabloid has endured one of many worst years in its historical past, falling to a £197m loss. Information Corp’s forecasts present that it doesn’t count on The Solar to return to development.
The Solar was the UK’s most widely-read newspaper for greater than 4 a long time till the Every day Mail overtook it final yr.
Mr Murdoch’s Information Corp booked an £84m impairment cost for The Solar in accounts filed on Friday.
It recorded £80m in prices regarding the phone-hacking scandal, together with £52m of charges and damages paid to civil claimants, up from £27m in 2019.
The corporate mentioned it has settled, or is within the means of settling, most claims linked to phone-hacking and inappropriate funds to public officers however added that it couldn’t estimate the price of further claims that haven’t but reached courtroom.
“It isn’t doable to estimate the legal responsibility for such further claims given the knowledge that’s at present out there to the corporate,” Information Corp mentioned.
The Solar has fallen dramatically from its mid-Nineteen Nineties heyday when circulation reached 5 million. It now sells fewer than 1 million copies a day, though circulation figures are not made public.
“Our precedence is to maintain our market-leading place because the No 1 information model within the UK by guaranteeing the proposition maintains its relevance for readers,” the corporate mentioned.
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