The publisher of the South China Morning Post is in talks regarding a possible acquisition, the company said after its shares shot up by more than 20 per cent and were suspended by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The newspaper, Hong Kong’s biggest-selling English language daily, has suffered from declining advertising revenues and has been accused of being too friendly to Beijing since the family of Malaysian billionaire, Robert Kuok, took control of the group in 1993.

Shares in the group, which is worth about HK$3.3bn, shot up in morning trading amid speculation that the Kuoks were planning a bid to take it private. The SCMP Group’s announcement was ambiguous about what was the target in the acquisition talks and calls to the group for clarification went unreturned.