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Johannesburg - The Times Media Group (TMG) is in talks about the takeover of BDFM, which publishes Business Day, Financial Mail and is the parent company of Summit TV, it was reported on Monday.
Business Day reported that TMG had made a move to buy out the 50% stake which United Kingdom-based Pearson owns in BDFM.
"There have been attempts to buy out Pearson almost from the day it was born in 1997," said BDFM publisher and Editor-in-Chief Peter Bruce.
"Most of the local shareholders have singularly failed to understand why Pearson was in BDFM in the first place."
The newspaper reported that should the deal be approved, Business Day, the Financial Mail and the African Broadcasting Channel would be 100% under the control of TMG.
It was expected that BDFM would continue to have a content syndication agreement with the Financial Times, and journalists from BDFM could be deployed to the Financial Times for training.
Last month, TMG said in its results for the year that BDFM had continued to struggle, with Business Day having recently lost a large source of revenue as a result of changes to JSE rules governing financial notices.
