The New York Times may have found its possible savior in Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim Helú, but the London Evening Standard has found an even stranger hero: KGB agent-turned-banking mega-billionaire Alexander Lebedev, who just became the paper’s new owner.

Mr. Lebedev, who once spied on London for the Soviet Union according to The New York Times‘ Alan Cowell and Eric Pfanner, offered this (chilling?) promise to The Guardian‘s Luke Harding: "I plan to meet the journalists personally very soon."

Anticipating the jokes sure to be made about him, Mr. Lebedev told Mr. Harding:

(The best thing, you say?)

Messrs. Cowell and Pfanner in the Times‘ described The Standard as "a newspaper that has long been a part of London’s fabric, offering commuters a diet of show business listings, celebrity gossip, sharp-edged editorials and lengthy feature articles, as well as being the afternoon newspaper read by Britain’s political elite."

 

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