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Earlier this year, the Dundee-based DC Thomson sold off its 9.7% stake in Scottish Radio Holdings to Emap for around £38m.

Two of the sellers of UBC shares were directors. The chief executive Simon Cole sold 6m shares worth around £1.5m, reducing his stake in the company to 12.1%. Commercial director John Quinn sold 387,494 shares worth almost £100,000, reducing his stake to 1.4%.

The rest of the shares were owned by former radio and TV personality Noel Edmonds. He sold 5.4m shares worth £1.35m in UBC to DC Thomson. The shares were owned through Unique Communications, of which Edmonds is a director. Unique, the radio production forerunner to UBC, still owns a 4.9% stake in UBC.

Cole said that DC Thomson wanted exposure to the changing economics of the radio industry and its purchase was a vote of confidence in UBC's vision.

DC Thomson, a private family-owned company, would not comment on what it intended to do with the rest of the SRH money raised. The  Scottish publisher owns the Sunday Post and comics the Beano and the Dandy among several titles.

As well as being a station owner, UBC produces radio programming and develops digital radio technology. It has created a digital electronic programming guide, which it has licensed to GCap and BT Livetime.

UBC has a 49% stake in OneWord after it sold the controlling 51% stake to Channel 4 earlier this year.

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