The Amsterdam company court has ruled that executives at newspaper group PCM did mismanage the company between 2004 and 2007 when it was owned by British private equity company Apax.

In particular they were wrong to saddle the company with high debts and interest payments through the leveraged buyout by Apax, the court said.
The court also criticised the introduction of a company share scheme for management for giving rise to a conflict of interest and declared a number of major decisions to be ‘invalid’.
Journalist and print workers unions had called for the investigation.
It is up to PCM’s current owner, Belgian newspaper group Persgroep, to decide what, if any action to take against the officials, lawyers said.