US investment firm TPG Capital has withdrawn its offer to buy Fairfax Media.

TPG says it “exited the Fairfax due-diligence process” and will not make an offer for the company, leaving US private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC as the potential sole bidder.

Fairfax chief Greg Hywood issued a memo to staff on Sunday saying that company had “brought to an end the private equity process ... and will proceed with our own strategy.”

Hellman & Friedman reportedly informed Fairfax board on Friday that it was not walking away from the deal, though it had not made a binding bid.

Fairfax’s Australian assets include the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, The Age newspapers, as well as the Macquarie radio network and most importantly, the Domain real-estate advertising division, which is its main earnings engine.

Mr Hywood said the bids from the two private equity players - which valued Fairfax at around A$2.9 billion - were unsolicited. 

“But once we received the above market indicative bids we acted in the best interests of our shareholders and ran a process.” he said.

“It is common in these situations for indicative bids not to translate to binding bids.”

The major player in Australia’s media environment has considered hiving off Domain into a separately-listed business earlier this year, which experts say could double in value by 2020 to near A$4 billion.