London Evening Standard Limited – the business established by Alexander Lebedev prior to taking over the Standard – lost £28.3m in its first ten months.
According to accounts filed with Companies House, in the months from its inception in December, 2008, to 4 October, the business had an operating loss of £27.7m.
After formation of the company Lebedev took control of the Standard newspaper in February, 2009. Prior to that the title was wholly owned by Daily Mail and General Trust.
London Evening Standard Limited’s operating loss included £9.9m of exceptional items coming, in part, as the business restructured the Standard into a free newspaper.
The Standard relaunched as a free newspaper on 2 October after previously having been a daily paid-for title with a cover price of 50p.
The company’s losses included £3.4m towards redundancy costs and an impairment charge of £3.6m.
Turnover for the period was £22.4m with staff salaries and other costs totalling £12.3m. Over the period the average number of employees was 346 and the highest-paid director, who was not named, received £302,552.
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