Aberdeen Journals Ltd is due to find out next week if the company will have to pay a £1.328m fine for predatory pricing of adverts.

The company, which publishes the Press & Journal, Evening Express and the weekly Herald & Post, was found guilty of selling cheap adverts in its weekly in a bid to remove the rival Aberdeen & District Independent from the market.

The Office of Fair Trading fined the company for abusing a dominant market position in contravention of Section 18 of the Competition Act 1998.

The publisher is asking the Competition Commission Appeal Tribunal to set aside the decision, either wholly or in part, and also to either set aside or reduce the penalty imposed.

It maintains that it did not hold a dominant position in the market for the supply of advertising space in both paid-for and free local newspapers in Aberdeen or the circulation area of the Herald & Post, and that even if it did, it did not abuse its position by engaging in predatory pricing.

It has told the OFT that even if it did, it did not commit the infringement intentionally – or negligently – and should not be required to pay a penalty.

Northcliffe-owned Aberdeen Journals has already overturned the decision once, winning a claim that the OFT definitions of local market conditions were flawed.

But after further assessment of the case, the OFT again ruled that the company did abuse a dominant market position.

Judgment was due to be handed down on Monday at a public hearing in London.

The final hearing of Aberdeen Journals v Director General of Fair Trading took place in Edinburgh on January 29 by a tribunal comprising Sir Christopher Bellamy, Professor Andrew Bain and Patricia Quigley.

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