Independent News & Media (INM) is actively seeking to acquire businesses in the media sector, and with bank support could spend up to €100m in doing so, according to Chairman Leslie Buckley.

Speaking at the group’s AGM in Dublin this morning, Buckley said the company would prioritise acquisition activity in the digital sector but would look at any media assets that became available on the island of Ireland or in Britain, including TV3 and local radio stations across channel.

He said that while INM had just received the €30m proceeds from the sale of the group’s minority shareholding in Australian media group, APN, the company needs to increase its value through acquisition, prior to any resumption of dividend payments.

Questioned about INM’s coverage of recent controversies involving its major shareholder, Buckley said that any view that Denis O’ Brien influenced editorial policy at INM’s titles was nonsense. “You only have to read the articles we were running all week, some of them critical, to give the lie to that view,” he added.

INM Chief Executive Robert Pitt said that advertising revenue for the first three months of the current financial year was 2.9 per cent higher but, that a modest continued decline in newspaper circulation meant overall revenues were still 1 per cent lower. He said the company had secured 28 of its targeted 30 voluntary redundancies in the editorial and production areas and that no cover price was envisaged in the current financial year for any of the group’s newspaper titles.