Berlin entrepreneurs Silke and Holger Friedrich have bought Berlin daily Berliner Zeitung from DuMont Mediengruppe. DuMont is a German media house which had flagged up a possible sale earlier in the year.
BZ was launched after World War 2 in East Berlin and continued after reunification. It became the first German newspaper to be owned by foreign investors when it was acquired by the former Mecom company (founded by UK media veteran David Montgomery). In 2009, the daily was acquired for €152m by DuMont, of Cologne, after the heavily-indebted Mecom was forced to sell-off its European newspaper publishing.
The transaction requires regulatory approval. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
