London financial publisher Capital Ideas has declared its interest in buying The Observer newspaper and turning it into a weekly current-affairs magazine, according to a City AM report and confirmed to us by a company spokesman.
The firm would be an unlikely suitor for the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, which faces an uncertain future due to the financial position of its owner Guardian Media Group and the shift in publishing models away from print. No concrete plans for axing it have been drawn up, but GMG has made it clear that all options are being considered.
A spokesman for Capital Ideas, which publishes a range of websites and reports for investors, told me the company wrote to GMG last week but still hasn’t received an official response. It’s not an offer as such, but rather the expression of a willingness to buy. The company says it is “serious” about the plan, though one might ask why a relatively unheard-of publisher would make its interest public at such a preliminary stage. The one thing Capital Ideas definitely gets out of this is some free publicity.
GMG tells City AM it hasn’t even received the letter yet, adding: “It is not surprising, in light of recent media coverage, that opportunistic and unsolicited approaches of this nature might be made.”
The Observer‘s circulation is is down 7.4 percent year on year to 415,566 in July, according to Friday’s ABC figures.
Disclosure: Our publisher ContentNext is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.

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