— A leading investor in Entertainment Rights says that the intellectual property group is unlikely to be sold.

The owner of Postman Pat said this week that it was holding “preliminary” talks with two parties, which suggests that a fresh approach has been made after negotiations were held in January. The investor said that it was likely that any offer from a potential bidder would undervalue the company. It is thought that Peace Arch Entertainment, a Canadian media group, is one of the latest suitors to have held talks with Entertainment Rights (ER) and the approaches have come as ER's price has fallen more than 70 per cent in the past year.

— Carlyle has emerged as the latest private equity group to be considering an approach for Reed Elsevier's trade magazines division. The pending auction has attracted interest from a number of private equity groups, including Apax, Cinven and Permira.

— Global Radio's views on the future of digital radio have become clearer as sources close to the owner of Heart 106.2 say that the group does not share the outlook of Fru Hazlitt, GCap's chief executive. While Global is understood to be cautious about the future of DAB, it would not have given up on the platform and would have waited until the industry had a clearer picture of its future before making such a radical decision. Ms Hazlitt announced plans to exit DAB in her strategy announcement in February.

— Robert Lerwill, the chief executive of Aegis, has reiterated that there would be “no significant benefit” of a large scale tie-up with the Havas media agency MPG. However, he did not rule out working more closely with Havas on a local and operational level.

Aegis, which is 29 per cent-owned by Vincent Bolloré, the chairman of Havas, announced a 16 per cent boost to 2007 pre-tax profits yesterday and said that it was confident but not complacent about the state of the advertising market in 2008.

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