News Corporation is close to reaching an agreement with the Office of Fair Trading over its bid to acquire total ownership of BSkyB, reports the Financial Times.

Citing "people familiar with the process", the paper claims that Rupert Murdoch's company is "much nearer than previously reported to satisfying objections that combining full ownership of BSkyB with its other assets would reduce the diversity of news provision in Britain."

The report says details of the remedy - said to be "structural" rather than "behavioural" - could be announced as soon as next week.

In other words, it implies that News Corp will surrender control of Sky News.

If an agreement is accepted by the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, a 15-day consultation will follow.

It would almost certainly mean News Corp avoiding a six-month review by the Competition ­Commission.

There was a noticeable note of surprise from BBC2's Newsnight presenter, Gavin Esler, when he mentioned the BSkyB story when showing the FT's front page at the end of the show.

Source: FT