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Publishers of the top selling Folkestone Herald and the Dover Express are to be sold by publishers Trinity Mirror Group.

The publishing heavyweights would be willing to enter talks with a bidder prepared to offer £750 million for their flagship newspaper the Daily Mirror and other national titles, but do not believe that o­ne will match its price.

After the company held talks with Marcus Evans, a multi-millionaire conference organiser, over a possible sale of its tabloid titles, his offer only “a touch above £600 million” was short of the figure they had hoped for.

With no possibility of selling the Mirror, or its entire regional portfolio, the company opted to offload Racing Post, plus its regional titles in the Midlands and the South East, which are collectively worth about £500 million. 

The regional businesses have been broken up into small blocks to allow large trade bidders, such as Gannett’s Newsquest unit and Johnston Press, to compete with smaller players, including Archant and the Kent Messenger Group.