Northcliffe Newspapers, a subsidiary of Daily Mail and General Trust, has been fined £1.3 million by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for predatory pricing by its Aberdeen Journals division.
The decision marks the end of a long running saga which saw the original case against Northcliffe Newspapers thrown out after it was decided that the premise on which the OFT had based its decision was not sufficiently defined. The original investigation was triggered by complaints from a weekly free newspaper, the Aberdeen and District Independent which accused the Aberdeen Journals of acting unlawfully by undercutting its advertising prices.
The OFT agreed with the accusations against the Aberdeen Journal, finding that the company had deliberately incurred losses through under-selling its only direct rival in the market.