'' (1845), Johnston's first acquisition in 1846 '', in 2006 The Johnston family business was involved in printing from 1797, originally in Falkirk. It bought control of its first newspaper, the
Falkirk Herald, in 1846. The company would remain headquartered in Falkirk for the next 150 years. The family publishing company was renamed F Johnston & Co Ltd in 1882, a title it would retain until it was floated on the London Stock Exchange as Johnston Press () in 1988. The company's first major acquisition came in 1970, when it took control of the Fife-based publishers Strachan & Livingston. the newspaper assets of
Scottish Radio Holdings, known as Score Press with forty-five titles in Scotland and Ireland (£155 million), and the Leinster Leader Group (€138.6 million). Johnston Press acquired
The Scotsman Publications in 2006, taking ownership of two of Scotland's major national broadsheet titles,
The Scotsman and
Scotland on Sunday, as well as two local papers, the
Edinburgh Evening News and the
Edinburgh Herald & Post. In 2014,
Iconic Newspapers acquired Johnston Press' titles in the
Republic of Ireland. In March of that year, Johnston Press launched a digital advertising agency called 1XL, in partnership with a number of other media companies including
Local World and
Newsquest. In February 2016, the company announced it was buying
i newspaper for £24m. The deal to buy
i was completed on 10 April 2016, giving Johnston Press a daily print circulation of over 600,000 newspapers and an audience
online and in print of almost 32 million people. In July 2016 Johnston Press sold off its three titles on the
Isle of Man — the
Isle of Man Examiner, the
Isle of Man Courier and the
Manx Independent — to
Tindle Newspapers in a deal worth £4.25m. In January 2017 Johnston sold off a further 13 titles covering the
East Midlands and
East Anglia (including the
Stamford Mercury) to
Iliffe Media for £17m. The same month, the company also won a contract from
Associated Newspapers (ANL) to print the Monday-to-Saturday issues of the
Daily Mail newspaper at Johnston's Portsmouth Web facility in Hampshire, following the closure of ANL's printing site at Didcot.
Administration In October 2018, with debts of around £200m and a market capitalisation of £3m, the company announced that it had put itself up for sale. On 16 November 2018, the group announced it was filing for administration, intending to then sell the assets to its lenders. Johnson Press in a statement added there was no longer any value in its shares, in a major blow to
Christen Ager-Hanssen, the chief executive of Custos Group, which was the largest shareholder at 25 percent. The company agreed a pre-packaged administration whereby Johnston Press's businesses and assets would be sold to a group of companies controlled by its creditors. Those included
GoldenTree Asset Management, the largest creditor with about £70m of bonds.
Takeover by creditors On 17 November 2018, a spokesperson for Johnston Press announced that all its titles had been transferred to the control of JPIMedia, a
special purpose vehicle (SPV), owned by the creditors. Under the terms of the
pre-packaged deal, ownership passed to a consortium of four lenders, CarVal, Fidelity, Benefit Street Partners and Goldentree Asset Management – who reduced its debts to £85 million and injected £35 million investment. This however was subject to criticism by Johnston Press's largest shareholder, described as a "blatant pre-planned corporate theft by bondholders", and was raised in Parliament. ==Operations==