Johnston Press surges as DMGT said to plan bid for i newspaper

Johnston Press, which also owns the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, announced last month that it was putting itself up for sale as it struggles to pay back a £220m bond due next June.

Sky News reported on Saturday that the bid from DMGT was at an early stage, but is expected to be lodged ahead of a deadline in the coming weeks set by Johnston's advisers at Rothschild.

In its half-year results at the end of August, the company posted a 10% decline in total revenue to £93m but said it swung to a pre-tax profit of £6.2m from a loss of £10.2m the year before. However, this was mostly due to a one-off accounting gain of £8.8m.

It said at the time that a strong performance from the i newspaper helped to mitigate the broader decline in revenues, with circulation revenues for the i up 17% and advertising revenues 20% higher.

At 0950 GMT, the shares were up 16.5% to 3.82p.