The venture capitalists are reported to have been in talks with Trinity Mirror since September. The talks are understood to have been held between Trinity chairman Sir Victor Blank and Apax chairman Sir Ronald Cohen, who are reported to be old friends.
At that stage, the talks were about the national newspapers the Daily Mirror, The People and the Sunday Mirror. However, as these discussions continued, the group's 240 local newspapers were included in the negotiations too, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph.
The regional newspaper business is likely to be of interest to Candover, which led the buyout of Regional Independent Newspapers from United Business Media and its sale for £560m to Johnston Press. It also owned Midland Independent Newspapers.
The bid is not thought to have been put to the Trinity Mirror board, however, because Blank believes the £1.3bn offer undervalues the company. The company has been the subject of takeover speculation after its share price fall since 1999, when Mirror Group Newspapers merged to with Trinity to form the company.
Hope of a takeover of the company is understood to have kept the company's share price from falling further and it has still managed to outperform the FTSE All-Share index in the last year.
The news comes on the day that Trinity Mirror's new chief executive, former IPC Magazines boss Sly Bailey, joins the company. Reports say she was told about the takeover discussions, which ended in December.
The company is also facing a lawsuit from Ric Piper, who had been set to join the publisher in October as finance director. Trinity Mirror withdrew its offer of the £300,000-a-year job after Piper's former company technology consultancy WS Atkins issued a profits warning, which Trinity Mirror felt brought Piper into disrepute.
Shares in Trinity Mirror leapt when the market opened this morning, rising by 6.77% to trade at 394.5p. This is up 25p on last week's closing price.
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