Prospective buyers of the Daily Telegraph and Spectator purportedly include Rupert Murdoch, the group that owns the Daily Mail, and Paul Marshall, the millionaire hedge fund manager who once wrote a book about rehabilitating the Lib Dems but now owns a growing slice of Britain’s rightwing media landscape. Other names in the running include former Telegraph editor Will Lewis and Peter Cruddas, former co-treasurer of the Conservative party. There’s a risk the UK’s competition watchdog might block a sale to News UK or DMGT, but a successful bid from Marshall, whose current media interests include GB News and Unherd, would also create a behemoth. His hedge fund, Marshall Wace, declined to comment on whether he was ruling out a bid. A spokesperson for DMGT said, “We’re not ruling out the possibility”. Investors have been circling the Telegraph Group since its parent company went into receivership in June with debts of about £1 billion which Lloyds Banking Group now controls. Sir Frederick Barclay (brother of deceased Sir David Barclay) indicated earlier this week he’d lined up finance in the UAE to buy back the debt, and the Times says Nadhim Zahawi, the former Tory chairman, has been acting as a middleman with a view to becoming chairman of the paper should the bid prove successful. Apparently Lloyds isn’t interested.
