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The project to change the European and Asian editions in line with the compact format revolution currently sweeping across the UK market will also include re-positioning the paper’s advertising sales.

Advertisers will be able to book global display campaigns in a single deal coordinated by the WSJ’s New York office.

The company said it is expected the development will eventually save the company around $17m a year.

The current editor and associate publisher of the paper in Europe, Frederick Kempe, is to return to New York to become assistant managing editor, responsible for international operations across both the print and online editions outside of the US.

The move will see the WSJ become the first pan-regional newspaper to make the switch to a compact format.

John McMenamin, head of international advertising sales at WSJ, said, “These new initiatives are an aggressive step to offer advertisers increased access to the Journal’s unparalleled audience by combining both print and online platforms, and shifting to a compact format that better lends itself to the needs of our global readership and the advertisers who want more opportunity to reach them.”

The Independent is widely recognised as the trend setter among the most recent moves by broadsheet newspapers re-launch as compact editions, starting its award winning change in the summer of 2003 only to be closely followed by The Times in November the same year.

The Guardian is understood to have brought forward its own plans to downsize in format – based on the Berliner in Germany – to the summer of 2005.

Penelope Muse Abernathy, the WSJ’s senior vice president, international and development, added: “The combination of the new content and compact format, together with the online edition, will give our readers a more convenient and useful global business daily briefing package.

“We will thus provide our advertisers with the most efficient way to reach the world’s most influential and affluent audience of business decision-makers.”

Further developments at the WSJ will include the launch of a weekend edition for US subscribers on 17 September.

By Kevin May