The market doesn't like what it sees in the Mirror

Company A employs 6,500 people and owns five national newspapers, 160 regional newspapers and 500 websites. Company B has 312 staff and one website. Question: which company has a stock market valuation six times greater than the other? Nul points if you said A. That is Trinity Mirror, where the share price fell 22% on Thursday as a dividend failed to reappear ; the market capitalisation is now a mere £160m. Company B is Rightmove, a web-only business where estate agents list houses for sale. The 10-year-old upstart is worth a cool £1bn – call it the value of a service that negates the need to advertise in local newspapers such as Trinity's. A comparison of market capitalisations is, of course, distorted by Trinity's borrowings of £266m and the deficit in its pension fund of £161m. But those facts are also terribly relevant – they are reasons why Sly Bailey, the long-serving chief executive, feels she can't yet restore a dividend prop for the shares. Until she does, her warning about the UK economy's "volatile and slow" recovery will feel like a comment about Trinity itself.