City AM readies for Wall St assault before the year-end

City AM, London’s free business newspaper launched last year by former Metro International executives Jens Torpe and Lawson Muncaster, is readying itself for the launch of the New York equivalent called Wall Street AM.

City AM, London’s free business newspaper launched last year by former Metro International executives Jens Torpe and Lawson Muncaster, is readying itself for the launch of the New York equivalent called Wall Street AM.

Marketing Week exclusively revealed early this year that Muncaster and Torpe were eyeing overseas markets (January 3) and now it looks likely that a New York edition of the freesheet could launch before the end of the year.

Muncaster says a launch abroad is unlikely until City AM becomes profitable but admits it is likely to be sooner than originally planned. Muncaster could not guarantee that Wall Street AM won’t launch before the end of 2006 but has said the newspaper might not use that particular name.

Muncaster says: “It’s a no-brainer when launching any business in the financial sector to protect yourself globally, so we have trademarked the name Wall Street AM. But until we make ourselves profitable in the UK, nothing is going to happen elsewhere. However, the original plan was to make ourselves profitable within three years, but it looks like we can achieve that in half the time.”

London is set to be the scene of a freesheet war in coming weeks with News International readying the launch of an evening free newspaper, believed to be called thelondonpaper.

In addition, Transport for London is offering a licence to distribute an evening newspaper on the capital’s transport network. Guardian Media Group and other newspaper groups have expressed an interest.