After more than two years of bitter fighting over the future of the Daily Telegraph that entangled investors from New York to Abu Dhabi, the venerable British newspaper may finally find a home in the more familiar London offices of rival the Daily Mail.
Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) was one of the first bidders for the newspaper when it initially went up for auction in 2023 after being seized by Lloyds Banking Group from the Barclay family. He will hope he will also be the last, having entered exclusive talks over a £500 million (€569 million) deal this weekend.
The move by DMGT, whose interest was first revealed in the Financial Times, is the latest twist in the tortuous sale of the 170-year-old broadsheet.
Many permutations of ownership have emerged during a process that has sparked geopolitical tensions and pitted Wall Street titans against a truculent newsroom fighting for its vision of an appropriate owner.
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“Nothing has ever seemed quite normal about the situation of the Telegraph Media Group,” said analysts at Enders.
Other observers have simply referred to the Telegraph sale as the “auction from hell” after a process that raised questions over whether the UK was open to business for overseas investors amid diplomatic disputes with potential owners in Abu Dhabi and their US partners.
[ Daily Mail owner strikes £500m deal to buy TelegraphOpens in new window ]
For many, the new merger will seem a perfect fit. Both newspapers are rightwing, fiercely opinionated and as influential among their loyal Middle England readerships as in Westminster.
“Hurrah for Lord Rothermere,” said one reader under the Telegraph news story on the takeover. Another wrote that the deal was “the best possible solution for this fine newspaper to survive and thrive”.
Both titles have pivoted their coverage to the rightwing Reform party despite their traditional ties to the Conservatives, amplifying messages around flashpoint issues such as immigration and Brexit.
They also share an ambition to break into the vast US market, where the election of Donald Trump has shifted the media rightward and potentially laid the ground for new entrants, even with an English accent.
But for some in the Labour government, which must decide whether to approve the merger, the combination has sparked concern over the possibility of the nation’s right-leaning media being brought under a single proprietor.
The deal would give Lord Rothermere the sort of power to influence UK politics last seen when Rupert Murdoch brought together The Times, Sun and News of the World under the News Corp banner.
“It is impossible to overstate the fear and hostility that the Tel and Mail invoke in senior Labour politicians,” said one adviser close to the party.
People close to Lord Rothermere insist he does not interfere with the editorial direction of his newspapers and say he sees the Telegraph primarily as an investment. He has committed to its editorial separation from the Mail, should the deal go ahead, and to invest in the title.
But ministers will first be given the chance to judge the merger on the grounds of media plurality, a concept seen as important for the functioning of a democratic society.
Competition authorities will also be concerned about a single proprietor holding a significant share of the UK newspaper market – Alice Enders, an independent analyst, said the two groups’ combined readership share would be about 36 per cent.
DMGT will argue that the news market is no longer defined narrowly by print titles given the proliferation of social media and online news platforms.
On the competition side, Enders noted that the Telegraph had already outsourced its print advertising sales to DMGT, which was likely to help address any concerns over the merger.
The sellers of the Telegraph will also be happy to move on quickly from the process, with the DMGT deal struck less than a week after Gerry Cardinale’s US private equity group RedBird Capital pulled the plug on its attempt to win control of the newspaper.
This time last year the fast-talking New York dealmaker promised he would take charge of the long-delayed sale, restructuring the planned transaction with his own funds and committing to end the uncertainty.
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He had stepped in after an exclusive period for talks with a different preferred bidder, New York Sun owner Dovid Efune, fell through and with a potential rival bid being tabled by US financier Todd Boehly.
RedBird had in effect agreed to buy the Telegraph for £500 million from itself after the government blocked a previous deal it had led involving money from Abu Dhabi via investment vehicle IMI.
IMI, owned by United Arab Emirates vice-president Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was permitted to take a minority stake after the law was changed to allow up to 15 per cent of a domestic newspaper to be owned by a foreign state.
Apollo was lined up to provide about £150 million in debt, with minority stakes also allocated to DMGT and billionaire investor Sir Leonard Blavatnik. RedBird filed its plans to the government at the start of October for regulatory approval.
People close to the deal said Cardinale had run out of time and patience in the face of an onslaught of negative headlines in the newspaper he wanted to buy.
One person described the hostility within the Telegraph to the hard-driving US financier as “organ rejection”. Lord Rothermere, a British aristocrat and natural conservative, is likely to be more acceptable.
“The newsroom wanted a proprietor like Murdoch,” said one person involved in the sale process, adding that Cardinale was not that kind of person while Lord Rothermere fitted the bill.
Cardinale also needed to turn his focus to RedBird’s first-round bid, alongside David Ellison’s Skydance, for US media group Warner Bros Discovery, people close to the process said, an auction the two are seen as favourites to win.
Ellison was wondering, they say, why his partner was dedicating time to a £500 million acquisition of a UK newspaper when a $70 billion (€61 billion) mega-deal that would transform Hollywood was on the table.
“He was spending too much time on the Telegraph when at the same time trying to put down billions in the US,” said a person close to the investment group.
One media executive pointed out that money from the Middle East – an issue that has caused so much upset in the UK – was now likely to be used as part of the deal to buy Warner.
Those with knowledge of RedBird’s decision to abandon its pursuit of the Telegraph deny rumours of a shortfall in funding or concerns over the disclosure process in any regulatory investigation.
Even so, the sudden decision after almost two years of negotiations came as a shock, with some media executives suggesting the threat of a lengthy public inquiry, combined with mounting opposition from peers in the House of Lords and the increasingly hostile newsroom, had been enough to kill the deal.
“It’s a startling about-face,” said one person close to the deal, pointing to the “extensive investment of time and energy” on the part of Cardinale, who had promised in March when the takeover was first agreed to personally get it over the line.
The chaotic deal has raised questions about how investible UK newspapers are in the current febrile political climate. Rival media companies argued against setting the bar on sovereign wealth financing too high, as one day they too might need to look for overseas investment to achieve the global scale some see as necessary to compete with increasingly dominant voices from the US.
Experts believe it could take up to a year for the necessary regulatory hurdles to be met for the takeover by DMGT.
Media analyst Ian Whittaker said he expected the deal to be approved. “If you’re Starmer et al, you’ve made a noise about the UK being more pro-business and while on the old definition it might be said to be dominance, the CMA would risk looking old fashioned if it blocked the deal.”
DMGT has already walked away from the Telegraph once when bidding with money from a Qatari investment group, pulling out of the first auction for the newspaper in 2023 and saying it could not justify the required cost given the legal and regulatory issues. These issues have not disappeared.
It is not clear how DMGT will finance its latest bid. Observers say the group will probably need to raise external funds and potentially sell one or both of its I and Metro newspapers to meet competition concerns. “The financial details are still being worked on,” said one person close to the situation.
Another person said Apollo or another large US private credit institution might support the transaction, although no final decision had been taken.
Moreover, the Telegraph newsroom will also want to have a say in the matter. Lord Rothermere’s praise of the title’s “excellent” editor in the DMGT statement announcing the agreement seems to be carefully judged, although the Telegraph’s first story on the deal pointedly referred to DMGT’s “long-standing business connections in the UAE via its oil and gas information arm”.
Another reader said under the Telegraph’s story: “Very, very good news if it comes off. I hope the editorial team and staff at The Telegraph are happy with this potential outcome?” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
