Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), publisher of the Daily Mail, is seeking to dispose of its commuter-friendly free title the Metro for as much as £35m as part of efforts to ‘streamline’ its business.

First published back in 1999 the Metro is expected to command a price of between £25 and £35m and the sale, dovetailing with a strategic review of the public transport distributed title.

According to the Times the sale is being orchestrated by new DMGT chief executive Paul Zwillenberg with the aim of removing distractions from its core activities at the Daily Mail, a process which has already seen it reduce its stake in financial publisher Euromoney to 49% and offload Elite Daily, a video-sharing provider geared toward millennials.

No interested suitors have yet emerged for the property although print veteran David Montgomery, Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press are all cited by the Times as being front runners for the title, with Montgomery emerging as something of a wild card having already been linked to a potential takeover of the Daily Express and Daily Star.