Many fear competition and diversity will be diminished as Daily Mail owner wins race to buy newspaper
Many fear competition and diversity will be diminished as Daily Mail owner wins race to buy newspaper
As the dust settles from the battle for the ownership of the Daily Telegraph, one man has been left standing: Lord Rothermere, whose family have been a mainstay of British newspapers for more than a century.
“This is a very British stitch-up,” said Lionel Barber, the former editor of the Financial Times. “Lord Rothermere has played a very astute poker hand, he’s shown patience and he’s the big winner.”
The announcement on Saturday morning that the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) had agreed a £500m deal with the Daily Telegraph’s owners, RedBird IMI, could bring to an end a saga that began in 2023 when both Telegraph titles and the Spectator magazine were put up for sale due to debts owed by the Barclay family.
RedBird Capital, the US group led by Gerry Cardinale, had dropped its own bid just over a week ago amid campaigning from the Telegraph’s newsroom for its links to China to be investigated.
A previous RedBird offer, backed by Abu Dhabi, had also faced criticism and calls for government to intervene over concerns it could be run by a foreign state.
Such was the concern over its future that Keir Starmer joked at prime minister’s questions that Tory MPs were asking him to nationalise the newspaper.
Rothermere was previously in negotiations to buy 9.9% equity in the Telegraph.
“I’ve always maintained that he was the likely owner, once Cardinale RedBird IMI exited, because they were never going to be decades-long owners of the Daily Telegraph,” Barber said.
“Rothermere was sitting there with 9%, and he therefore would have been in a very strong position in five or seven years to take over.
