[vidarh]

> the rate their owners are burning through cash and are anticipating massive layoffs soon.

The Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group had about 1.1 billion pounds net assets, of which the vast majority are liquid, as of end of March 2015 (after they've over the last few years sold of shares in various regional newspapers and AutoTrader, shoring up their balance sheet massively).

The sole purpose of The Scott Trust is to secure The Guardian in perpetuity.

There may be layoffs at some point. There may not be. But losing money for years on end is in itself not a problem for The Guardian. They'll want to at some point trim the loss down a bit to not eat to much into the capital, but at current rates then have quite literally decades of runway.

[p01926]

See this FT article [1] (a admittedly biased competitor) from late last month. Their cash shrank from £840M to £740M in the last year, and they're planning to cut "costs" by 20%.

That's a tragedy at such a great newspaper, but it does color their analysis regarding the companies most responsible for their decline.

[1] http://www.ft.com/fastft/2016/01/25/guardian-to-cut-costs-by...