Metro Catalunya

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 1:52pm on Monday, February 2nd, 2009

On January 30, 2009, The Guardian newspaper in London reported that Metro International has shut down all of its Metro newspaper editions in Spain:

"Freesheet group Metro International has closed its operations in Spain, in a sign of the chill wind blowing through the global newspaper industry.

Metro, which has grown rapidly to become the third largest newspaper company in the world, said it would no longer publish in seven Spanish cities in the face of "unsustainable" losses.

The Spanish edition of Metro was launched in 2001 and became profitable three years later, but it was now suffering from a declining advertising market and increased competition, Metro said. Yesterday's Spanish edition was the last to be published.

"Several merger opportunities have been investigated during 2008; however, the size of the combined losses of the Spanish free press market made it extremely difficult to find an alternative that would have improved the future financial performance of Metro Spain," the company said in a statement.

"Even though Metro in Spain has been losing less money than its Spanish free competitors, the worsening Spanish economic downturn, which during the beginning of 2009 has resulted in a collapsing advertising market, has now resulted in unsustainable losses," said the Metro chief executive, Per Mikael Jensen.

"The stiff competition, coupled with a forecasted continued weakening advertising market for Spain, makes the closure of our operations the only rational decision at this time. A continued investment in Spain cannot be justified at this point and we are therefore focusing our resources on growth areas where we can create long term shareholder value," Jensen added.

Metro is published in more than 150 cities, in 22 countries, and claims a global readership of more than 22 million people a day."