Daily Mail and General Trust plc (
LSE DMGT) is one of the
Europe's largest media companies and has interests in national and regional
newspapers,
television and
radio. The company has extensive activities based outside the UK, through
Northcliffe Media,
DMG Radio Australia, DMG World Media, DMG Information. Its biggest markets apart from the UK are in the
United States,
eastern Europe, and
Australia. In June 2006 the company was relegated from the
FTSE 100 index into the mid-cap
FTSE 250 Index,
[1] although it was promoted back into the
FTSE 100 in March 2007.
[2] DMGT was again demoted to the FTSE 250 in December 2007.
The group can trace its origins back to launch of the mid market national newspaper the Daily Mail in 1896, but it was officially incorporated in 1922 to control Associated Newspapers Holdings expanding interests. Daily Mail and General Trust plc was fully incorporated in 1922 and its shares were first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1932. In 1922 Lord Rothermere acquired control of the Daily Mail newspaper and to this date, Rothermere's descendants continue to control the Daily Mail and General Trust. Rothermere and the Mail were editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists and he wrote an article, "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine". Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in Britain. Secret British government papers released in 2005 show that Rothermere wrote to Adolf Hitler congratulating him for the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and encouraged him to march into Romania. Rothermere also purchased estates in Hungary in case Britain should fall to a Soviet invasion. There is a memorial to Rothermere in Budapest. To this date Rothermere's descendants continue to control the Daily Mail and General Trust.
As one of the longest-established media companies in the UK, DMGT has long invested in its business in order to become one of the most successful information providers in the country.
After almost 100 years in Fleet Street, the company left its original premises of New Carmelite House in Fleet Street in 1988 to move to Northcliffe House in Kensington. 10,000 tons of rubble were removed to create the vast 115&_160;feet (35&_160;m) high atrium, with a domed roof containing 64 tons of glass. The break-up of Fleet Street was a revolution that had to happen in the tradition-bound world of newspaper printing where powerful unions resisted efforts by the Fleet Street publishers to modernise and economise. At the same time as the newspapers moved to Kensington, the printing operation for Southern England moved four miles (6&_160;km) away to Surrey Quays. This state-of-the-art printing centre was opened on an 11-acre (45,000&_160;m2) site at Rotherhithe in the London Docklands in 1989.
