Danish investor Morten Lund has bought a 51 per cent stake in the Danish free newspaper Nyhedsavisen, reports German daily Die Tageszeitung.

Lund is best-knows as an early investor in the internet telephony firm Skype, which was sold to eBay for €2.1 billion (£1.6b) in 2005.

According to the report, the former majority owners, Iceland’s Baugur group (best-known in the UK for investments in high-street retailers), may want to export Nyhedsavisen’s free-subscription model to mainland Europe. The same approach has has also been successful with Reykjavik’s Fréttabladid, which is read by 70 per cent of the the island’s population every day.