Further to Giles Tremlett's report on Monday, Spain's El País newspaper feels the pain as it axes one third of workforce, the journalists' union has produced a chart on the profits made by the paper's parent company, PRISA.
According to the chart, the company made a total of €851.8m profits over the last 11 years. In 2005, it made €143.7m. Profits fell dramatically year by year after that, down to €19m in 2010 and just €12.2m last year.
But accounts registered with Spain's stock market commission show PRISA expecting to make a profit over the whole of this year, despite a claim by management that the paper went into loss in August.
So why the cull of 150-plus staff by PRISA's chief executive Juan Luis Cebrián, co-founder of El País and its long-time editor?
Clearly he has been required to reduce costs by PRISA's investors, who include a group headed by Nicolas Berggruen and British-born Martin Franklin, and banks that swapped debt for shares in the summer.
Some staff at the newspaper would like to see a new owner, but Cebrián is highly unlikely to sell off a paper he has nurtured since 1976 and turned into Spain's highest circulation daily.
Source: Private information
