The Financial Times said in a report this morning that the Barclay brothers, whose company Press Holdings publishes The Business, were looking at acquiring other titles and selling The Business to members of its management team.
However, publisher Neil has said in a staff memo that while the idea had been mooted in the past it was "to use the vernacular, bollocks" and had stemmed from when the Barclay brothers had been in the running to buy Scottish Media Group's Herald newspapers last year.
The possibility of selling the Sunday broadsheet arose because it would have avoided referring the deal to the Competition Commission.
In his email to staff, Neil said: "My own feeling was that we'd be referred anyway -- and since we didn't get the Herald, the idea was consigned to the dustbin. The FT knew all that -- yet they still chose to run their story. I can only conclude that it's an attempt to destabilise us: they must be really rattled now that our sales have gone over 100,000!"
The Business regularly runs house ads pointing out occasions when it has scooped the Financial Times to big stories.
Paul Woolfenden, managing director of The Business, said: "We feel like Virgin Airlines up against British Airways at the moment. We're just waiting to see people rummaging through our dustbins next."
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