The deal sees Montgomery buy the owner of the Berliner Zeitung newspaper through his company Mecom. He will take a non-executive role at the newspaper with plans to develop it beyond Berlin into the wider German market. It is the first time a foreign company has owned a German newspaper.
The deal will see Mecom take control of the quality broadsheet Berliner Zeitung, which has a daily circulation of approximately 185,000; along with East Berlin tabloid Berliner Kurier; the weekly advertising freesheet Abendblatt; and TIP, a bi-weekly Berlin entertainment guide.
In addition, Berliner Verlag owns a modern print plant which prints its own titles and third party newspapers, including Financial Times Deutschland.
"We have the highest regard for the German newspaper industry and we know that Berliner Verlag is an excellent company. We will be proud custodians of the titles within Berliner Verlag, committed to the highest journalistic standards, editorial integrity and good management," Montgomery said.
He added that Mecom hoped to be able to add further publishing assets to Berliner Verlag in due course.
For five years, Montgomery has been looking for major media investments and he has previously been involved in putting together unsuccessful bids for the Telegraph Group, Scottish Media Group's newspaper business, the ITV Digital licence and Express Newspapers.
Montgomery, who left Mirror Group in 1999, had a reputation for cutting jobs when he ran the publisher and The Independent reports that there are fears the German workforce could be cut.
Uwe Vorkotter, editor of Berliner Zeitung, told The Independent: "Mr Montgomery was polite and friendly but he did not give me the information I needed on jobs and journalistic profiles. We are a profitable and successful paper. I did hear from him that he wants to develop the paper but also that he wants to cut costs and make efficiencies."
As well as running the Mirror Group, Montgomery is famous for having set up Live TV, the station that brought the world topless darts.
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