Telegraph bought by US private equity giant
The Daily Telegraph is poised to be sold to an investment consortium led by a US private equity firm, bringing a likely end to two years of uncertainty over its ownership.
Redbird Capital Partners, one half of the vehicle which first bought the broadsheet newspaper from Lloyds bank in 2023, is the lead investor in a group of media backers that will take control of the Telegraph in a deal worth £500m.
Should it pass antitrust and proper owner checks, the deal will bring closure to a lengthy period of uncertainty for the 170-year-old paper. In June 2023 it was repossessed from the Barclay family to Lloyds, firing the starting gun on an auction in which Redbird IMI, a joint venture between Redbird Capital and IMI, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund IMI, successfully bid £600m.
But the deal was blocked by the then Conservative government, which rushed through legislation to ban the ownership of news organisations by foreign state.
Under the new Redbird-run arrangement, IMI, a state-owned media investment fund, will still own a minority stake in the Daily Telegraph thanks to a change of law earlier this month which paved the way for the deal.
Telegraph deal cements Redbird’s status as major UK player
The deal makes Redbird one of the most significant investors in UK media and entertainment assets. The New-York-based private asset fund, founded by Gerry Cardinale is the owner of British production company All3media and has a stake in the sports group that owns Liverpool football club.
It also has significant ownership of household names like Italian football club AC Milan, the Alpine F1 team, and is rumoured to be in talks to merge All3media with ITV.
Cardinale, who founded Redbird in 2014, hailed the Telegraph acquisition as a “new era” for the paper, and branded the UK a “great place to invest” in a statement.
“Having now spent time with [editor] Chris Evans, [chief executive] Anna Jones and the entire senior management team at The Telegraph, we have tremendous conviction in the growth potential of this incredibly important cultural institution,” he said.
The preliminary deal is yet to be finalised. Redbird said it remained “in discussions” with several UK-based investors, which would take up minority stakes in the paper should the agreement go through.
Earlier this month it emerged that Lord Rothermere, the proprietor of the Daily Mail and i newspaper, was mulling taking up a minority stake in the paper.