Hacking claims wipe €20m off Trinity Mirror

Around €20m has been wiped off the value of Trinity Mirror after a phone-hacking scandal spread to the owner of the Daily Mirror.

On Monday, the lawyer who handled many of those phone-hacking cases filed legal claims against Trinity Mirror on behalf of four people, including the former England soccer manager Sven-Göran Eriksson.

The reputation of British journalism was rocked by the revelation of hacking by journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World into voicemails of celebrities, politicians, and even crime victims.

Trinity Mirror said in a statement it had yet to receive any claims, and repeated assurances that its journalists worked within the law.

“We have not yet received any claims nor have we been provided with any substantiation for those claims,” Trinity Mirror said.

Shares in the group were down 9.4% as investors digested the threat of increasing legal costs and damage to the reputation of a group already grappling with falling advertising and circulation revenues.

News International has settled dozens of civil cases, paying tens of millions of pounds, and its journalists are still facing criminal charges over the allegations that staff routinely hacked into voicemail messages to generate salacious stories.

Billions were wiped off the value of Murdoch’s News Corp at the height of the scandal last year and executives were forced to step down.

Singer Capital analyst Johnathan Barrett said the legal claims would weigh on Trinity Mirror’s share price because although the number of claims was small compared with News International, they could rise over time.

The legal action will also provide a stiff test to the group’s new chief executive Simon Fox, who joined the publisher in September and to Piers Morgan, a former Daily Mirror editor.

The claims allege phone hacking took place at the Daily Mirror when Morgan was editor.

Morgan has denied authorising phone hacking during his time as editor, most recently at the Leveson inquiry.

The other three claimants are Abbie Gibson, a former nanny for the family of David Beckham, soccer player Garry Flitcroft, and actress Shobna Gulati.