Nahar eyes capital increase

Four million shares offered
to existing shareholders

An-Nahar SAL, publisher of An Nahar newspaper, plans to raise its capital by $5.7 million, to $34.6 million, by issuing 4.3 million shares with a value of LL2,000 each.

The issuance is managed by BankMed and is currently open to existing shareholders only. The deadline for subscribing to the issuance is July 25. At a later stage it could be open to other investors. Total current outstanding shares are around 15.6 million shares.

An-Nahar, like most daily newspapers, was losing money (between $1 million and $1.5 million every year). A sizeable layoff measure a few years ago helped narrow the deficit in 2010, but the economic slowdown since then has had a negative impact on ad spending in all media, including An-Nahar.

Recently, the daily has reduced its size, from 28 pages to 24 pages. Several capital increases were incurred in the past to offset current deficits.

Major shareholders in An-Nahar SAL include the Hariri family (around 55 percent), the Tueni family (27 percent), and Al-Walid bin Talal (around 19 percent), among others.