The 142-year history of the Manchester Evening News is closely intertwined with that of the Guardian.

The MEN was founded in 1868 – some 47 years after the Manchester Guardian – by Mitchell Henry and soon afterwards sold to Peter Allen and his brother-in-law John Edward Taylor, the son of the Guardian's founder.

"From its birth in 1868 until 1905 the Evening News had been under the same ultimate control as the Guardian," wrote the historian David Ayerst in Guardian: Biography of a Newspaper (1971).

Two decades of independence followed, during which the two papers were still locked into a marriage of convenience, sharing offices in Cross Street, Manchester, as they had done since 1879.

In 1924 the two papers finally became official stablemates after the MEN was purchased by John Scott, the son of the legendary editor CP Scott.

CP himself was delighted with the deal because of the profits it would contribute to the group.

Ayerst concluded that the paper turned out to be not a "springboard" but a "safety net" that helped the company weather the intensely competitive newspaper market of the inter-war period.

A notable appointment was made in the midst of the financial crisis enveloping Britain at the start of the 1930s, when William Haley became managing editor of the MEN at the age of 29.

Over his 13 years in charge – he went on to become director-general of the BBC and then editor of the Times – he grew circulation from 150,000 to more than 200,000, securing the MEN's position as Manchester's dominant evening paper.

He was also paid more than John Scott himself. As Scott admitted to Haley, acknowledging the Guardian's debt to the MEN: "After all, you make the money we spend."

Over the subsequent decades, during which the Guardian was transformed into a national paper, dropping Manchester from its masthead in 1959, it remained dependent on the MEN's profits.

Take the 1970-71 financial year, the 150th anniversary of the Guardian, when, according to Geoffrey Taylor's Changing Faces: A History of the Guardian 1956-88 (1993), the Guardian's £1.19m loss was offset by the MEN's £1.44m profit.

In 1961 – the year the Guardian began printing in London as well as Manchester – the company added Manchester's other evening paper, the Chronicle, to its portfolio, merging it with the MEN two years later.

The importance of the paper to the company's operations is underlined by the fact that it was named Guardian and Manchester Evening News between 1972 and 1993.