Two leading British media groups have reportedly shown fresh interest in a takeover of the Telegraph and Spectator alongside RedBird IMI, a consortium backed by the United Arab Emirates.
Bloomberg said Rupert Murdoch’s News UK and DMGT, which owns the Daily Mail, are examining options regarding the Conservative-supporting newspaper and its sister magazine.
It comes as Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, considers reports submitted by competition and media regulators on whether a more detailed investigation is needed into RedBird IMI’s planned £600m takeover.
RedBird IMI is a partnership between International Media Investments, a fund backed by the UAE’s vice-president, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and the US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners. Its proposed deal has been fiercely opposed by many Tory MPs and peers who have raised concerns about press freedom and had urged the regulators to intervene.
Mansour is best known in the UK as being the ultimate owner of Manchester City football club. RedBird IMI is run by Jeff Zucker, a former CNN president.
In November, Lord Rothermere, the executive chair of DMGT, expressed interest in the Telegraph in an interview with the Times. Last year, News UK was among the parties that had shown interest in the Spectator. News UK, DMGT and RedBird IMI declined to comment.
This week, Lady Stowell, the Tory chair of the Lords communications and digital committee, tabled an amendment to the digital markets bill that would give parliament a veto on foreign governments taking over UK media organisations. Her amendment will face a vote on Wednesday. More than 100 MPs led by the former minister Robert Jenrick have supported the amendment.
The UK government is in talks with Stowell and is considering whether to take its own action, including amending existing legislation in a move that would supersede Stowell’s amendment.
When asked if the government was considering exploring the possibility of amending existing legislation to prevent a foreign state from owning a British news organisation, a spokesperson for the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said on Tuesday that the government “recognised the strength of feeling towards Lady Stowell’s amendment to allow parliament to veto the takeover”.
“We’re in discussions with her. To be clear, the process is a parliamentary one and is completely separate to the internal government process,” the spokesperson said.
Frazer is considering reports from Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on the implications of the RedBird IMI deal and whether to open a phase 2 investigation in which the CMA is given 24 weeks to assess whether the deal operates against the public interest and whether any remedies can be instigated to let the merger proceed.
At the end of phase 2, the culture secretary has the power to make an adverse public finding, order the transaction to be unwound or make any other undertakings to prevent public interest concerns.
Downing Street said on Tuesday that Frazer was “engaged in a quasi-judicial decision-making process on the sale of the Telegraph, [and] it’s important to let this process run its course”.
