British Trade and Industry Secretary, Mr Stephen Byers has given regional newspaper group Trinity International 12 months to dispose of its Northern Irish newspapers if it is to win approval for its £2 billion sterling (€3 billion) merger with Mirror Group Newspapers.
Mr Byers also said Trinity could not retain or buy back more than 19.99 per cent of the titles without consent from the Government and could not have any representation on the board of the papers' new owners.
The detailed conditions came six weeks after Mr Byers first said the merger would require Trinity to sell the newspapers.
The titles covered by the ruling are the Belfast Telegraph, Sunday Life, Community Telegraph and Farm Trader.
Mirror Group already owns a number of Irish papers and Mr Byers said in July that he believed Trinity would have to sell its titles to maintain a range of newspaper ownership in the politically sensitive region. Trinity is buying Mirror Group for around £1.2 billion sterling in cash and shares.
Combined with Trinity, which has a current stock market value of around £755 million, the group would be the UK's largest regional and second largest national newspaper publisher.
As well as the Northern Irish titles, Trinity's 120 regional newspapers include the Western Mail, the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post, the Newcastle Journal and Wales on Sunday.
Mirror Group owns a handful of regional titles including the Birmingham Evening Mail, the Birmingham Post and the Coventry Evening Telegraph.
Its national newspapers are the Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People and Scotland's Daily Record and Sunday Mail.
Originally the British government had indicated that it would have to sell its Northern Irish titles in six months.
Trinity chief executive Mr Philip Graf said that when the Mirror merger and the intention to sell the Northern titles was first announced in July, there had been "a number of expressions of interest from very credible buyers".
It is likely that among the expressions of interest in the Belfast Telegraph was one from a management team planning a buyout, probably backed by venture capitalists.
Trinity also owns the Sunday Business Post in the Republic.
