Government intervenes in Daily Mail’s £500m Telegraph takeover
The Culture Secretary has launched a formal probe into the proposed £500 million takeover of The Telegraph by the owner of the Daily Mail, a month after Lisa Nandy indicated she was “minded to intervene” on public interest grounds.
On Thursday, she confirmed a public interest intervention into the deal, which would expand one of the UK’s largest media groups.
Ms Nandy expressed “concerns” over the deal’s potential impact on the “plurality of views” in UK news media.
She aims to assess if it will affect newspaper customers by reducing the number of titles owned by different parent groups.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will now investigate the potential deal and report its findings to the Government.
Ms Nandy added that media regulator Ofcom will also look into the public interest implications for the possible deal.
In November, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) agreed to purchase the Telegraph from RedBird IMI after an attempted purchase by the Abu Dhabi-backed investment firm was blocked by the then-Tory government.
A month later DMGT confirmed that it had secured funding to allow it to push forward with the deal.
The purchase would see The Telegraph become part of DMGT’s stable of media organisations, which also includes Metro, The i Paper and New Scientist.
The investigation is the latest twist in a roughly three-year ownership tussle for The Telegraph after it was put up for sale by lenders for previous owners the Barclay brothers.
An Abu Dhabi-backed consortium had struck a deal to buy the business but saw this blocked by the Government over foreign ownership concerns.
RedBird IMI, which was partly backed by US firm RedBird Capital but majority-owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, vice president of the United Arab Emirates, originally agreed to buy the media firm and fellow title The Spectator in 2023.
The Spectator has since been sold to hedge fund tycoon Sir Paul Marshall’s OQS Ventures business for £100 million.
RedBird Capital then agreed a deal without the backing of IMI to buy The Telegraph but saw this collapse late last year before a new deal was struck with DMGT.
