Reach PLC

One Canada Square, London · LSE: RCH · Founded 1903 (as Daily Mirror Group) · Rebranded Reach plc 2018

Overview

Reach plc is a British national and regional news publisher, listed on the London Stock Exchange, that owns more than 120 print and online brands across the UK and Ireland. Its portfolio spans national tabloids — the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Sunday Star, and The Sunday People — along with the Scottish titles Daily Record and Sunday Mail, the OK! celebrity magazine, and more than 100 regional titles including the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, BirminghamLive, and the Belfast Live network. It reaches approximately 39 million people each month in print and online, and more than 70 percent of the UK's online population visits at least one of its digital properties each month. It is the largest commercial news publisher in the UK by title count and online reach.

The company was known as Trinity Mirror from 1999 to 2018, and before that operated as the Mirror Group Newspapers. It rebranded as Reach in March 2018 following the acquisition of Express Newspapers — which held the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, and OK! — from Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell for £126.7 million. The acquisition brought together what had been two of Britain's three main tabloid publishing groups under a single corporate structure, raising competition concerns that were ultimately cleared by UK regulators. It is the parent company that owns the masthead of the Daily Mirror — the newspaper founded by Alfred Harmsworth in 1903 that is the origin of the corporate lineage now trading as Reach.

National Titles

Daily Mirror

National daily tabloid · founded 1903 · left-leaning · political commentary, celebrity, investigative

Sunday Mirror

Sunday tabloid · companion to Daily Mirror

Daily Express

National daily tabloid · acquired 2018 from Northern & Shell · historically right-leaning

Sunday Express

Sunday tabloid · companion to Daily Express

Daily Star

National daily tabloid · founded 1978 · entertainment and sport focus · acquired 2018

The Sunday People

Sunday tabloid · long-established national investigative and celebrity title

Daily Record

Scottish national daily · Glasgow-based · substantial political and culture coverage for Scotland

Sunday Mail

Scottish Sunday tabloid · companion to Daily Record

OK! magazine

Celebrity weekly magazine · acquired 2018 as part of Northern & Shell portfolio

Selected Regional Titles

Manchester Evening News

Founded 1868 · acquired from Guardian Media Group 2010 · Greater Manchester daily

Liverpool Echo

Merseyside daily · one of the UK's most established regional titles

BirminghamLive / Birmingham Mail

West Midlands digital and print brand

MyLondon

Digital-first London news brand

WalesOnline

Digital news brand for Wales · print companion: Western Mail

BelfastLive

Northern Ireland digital news brand

Nottingham Post

East Midlands regional daily

Irish Star

Republic of Ireland edition of the Daily Star

Curiously

Reach digital curiosity and lifestyle brand

Corporate History

The company traces its origins to the founding of the Daily Mirror by Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, on 2 November 1903. The Mirror Group passed through several ownership structures across the century, including Robert Maxwell's Mirror Group Newspapers, before being listed as a public company after Maxwell's death in 1991. Trinity International Holdings and Mirror Group merged in 1999 to form Trinity Mirror plc, combining national titles with a substantial portfolio of regional newspapers. The regional business expanded further when Trinity Mirror acquired Local World — a company holding 83 regional print titles — for £220 million in 2015, and when it acquired the Manchester Evening News and associated northern regional titles from Guardian Media Group in 2010 for £44.8 million.

The pivotal rebranding came in March 2018 when Trinity Mirror announced it would change its name to Reach following the completion of its acquisition of the Express, Star, and OK! titles from Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell for £126.7 million. The name change was intended to signal a shift in corporate identity away from the Mirror's historical associations and toward a broader digital publishing mission. The acquisition roughly doubled the company's national print circulation and brought a new political register — the Express titles' historically right-leaning outlook — under the same ownership as the traditionally Labour-aligned Mirror titles.

Financial Position and Strategic Challenges

Reach reported revenue of £518.4 million for FY2025, with an operating profit of £104.7 million but a net loss of £132.3 million, the latter reflecting impairment charges and legacy liabilities. Print revenue continues to decline — advertising revenue from print fell 15 percent in the first nine months of 2025 — while digital revenue has grown modestly, rising 1.9 percent in the same period. Digital remains the strategic priority, with Reach's network of websites attracting over one billion page views per month. The company has pursued a strategy of digital audience growth through volume, setting story-count and page-view targets for individual reporters — a practice that has generated internal criticism and press industry debate about its editorial implications.

Two significant legacy liabilities have weighed on the company's balance sheet. Phone-hacking litigation — arising from unlawful information gathering at Mirror Group titles in the early 2000s — has cost Reach hundreds of millions of pounds in settlements and legal costs since 2012. A large pension deficit, the result of defined benefit pension schemes inherited with the Mirror Group, has also required substantial ongoing contributions. Both are expected to diminish materially by 2027. Reach also faced an Advertising Standards Authority ruling in 2022 that seven advertorials promoting the UK government's "leveling up" policy on regional news websites had not been clearly labelled as advertising, breaching disclosure rules.

Scotland

Reach's Scottish operations are anchored by the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, published from its Glasgow offices. The Daily Record is Scotland's largest-selling daily newspaper and has a significant political and cultural profile distinct from Reach's London-based nationals. Reach Scotland also operates the Daily Record's website (dailyrecord.co.uk) as a major digital destination. The Scottish titles operate with their own editorial leadership, reflecting the distinct devolved political context — Holyrood, Scottish Government policy, and Scottish sport — that distinguishes Scottish news from the UK-wide remit of the Mirror and Express titles. The Scottish operation brings Reach into direct competitive overlap with BBC Scotland (see BBC Scotland entity page), which is Scotland's dominant broadcaster and, online, a significant news competitor.

Reach plc · reachplc.com

CEO: Piers North · Chairman: Nicholas Prettejohn

Headquarters: One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London

Stock: London Stock Exchange · LSE: RCH · FTSE SmallCap Index

Revenue (FY2025): £518.4 million · Staff: 5,000+