According to The Observer, Northern & Shell's new magazine will be a Spanish-language edition, posing a direct challenge to Hola!, Spain's top-selling glossy magazine, which was set up in Spain in 1944 but became an international success in the Eighties and Nineties, fuelled by an appetite for celebrity gossip.
OK! already sells a British version of the magazine in Spain, which is bought mainly by British visitors and expatriates but there are no sales figures for this.
Hello! is owned by Eduardo Sanchez Junco, who launched the title in the UK 16 years ago. Despite it setting an agenda for the diet of celebrity and royalty pictures -- replicated on TV, the national press and younger celebrity titles such as Heat, Now and Closer -- OK! has now eclipsed it in terms of sales.
In the latest set of ABCs, OK! sold 570,927 copies to Hello!'s 350,374.
The Spanish OK! will have an initial print run of more than 500,000 and Christian Toksvig, a former manager at Metro International, is to join Northern & Shell as international operations director to assist the Spanish launch.
OK! is also to go in sale in China with a trial print run of 100,000 in Beijing later this month and there are also talks of a US launch.
Martin Ellice, joint group managing director of Northern & Shell, told The Observer that OK is aiming to "obliterate them [Hello!] in their own back yard".
Separately, it has been reported that OK! has become involved in a privacy row over publishing pictures of Kate Moss on holiday with her baby daughter. Moss's lawyers are claiming invasion of privacy. OK! has declined to comment.
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