Torstar Offers to Acquire Sun Media

Torstar Corp., owner of the Toronto Star, Canada’s biggest newspaper, offered to buy Sun Media Corp. for $486 million to counter a challenge from publisher Conrad Black’s new national daily. Sun Media’s publications include the tabloid Sun papers in Toronto and Calgary, Canada. The proposal comes one day after Black began publishing the daily National Post. Coverage from his Southam Inc. national newspaper chain competes with the Star and Thomson Corp.’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s most established national daily. Black’s other papers include London’s Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post. Combined, Torstar and Toronto-based Sun Media would have 26% of the average weekly circulation of daily newspapers in Canada. Black has a 42% share that will expand if his new paper, the National Post, gains readers.