Foreign states to be allowed 15% stake in UK newspapers amid Telegraph uncertainty

The authorities volition let overseas states to ain stakes of up to 15% successful British newspapers successful a determination that could yet extremity 2 years of uncertainty implicit the ownership of the Telegraph titles.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is to denote the bounds connected Thursday done the instauration of a caller statutory instrumentality successful parliament, ending a months-long consultation involving intensive lobbying by paper owners.

A 15% headdress could let Gerry Cardinale’s US backstage equity steadfast RedBird Capital to finalise a woody to bargain the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

Labour has been considering the level of ownership threshold since a instrumentality was passed past twelvemonth by the Conservative authorities blocking overseas states oregon associated individuals from owning paper assets successful the UK aft an outcry implicit the attempted acquisition of the Telegraph titles by an Abu Dhabi-backed consortium.

RedBird IMI – a associated task betwixt RedBird Capital and IMI, which is funded by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates and proprietor of Manchester City Football Club – took power of the publishing radical successful November 2023.

The consortium, which agreed to wage the debts of the erstwhile owners, the Barclay family, was past forced to run an auction process to effort to recoup its £500m investment erstwhile the caller instrumentality made the acquisition “no longer feasible”.

The erstwhile Conservative authorities had been considering a headdress of 5% to 10%.

Lisa Nandy, the civilization secretary, has settled connected a 15% threshold aft lobbying by groups including Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, the proprietor of the Sun and Times titles, and the Daily Mail genitor company, Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT).

The paper groups argued that mounting the threshold excessively debased could chopped disconnected a important root of imaginable backing for the industry.

DMGT had held talks with Qatari backers for a imaginable bid for the Telegraph but decided that immoderate imaginable woody would astir apt beryllium thwarted by contention issues.

The mounting of a threshold allows RedBird Capital, which holds a 25% involvement successful the RedBird IMI associated venture, to fully formulate a imaginable deal to instrumentality implicit the Telegraph titles.

The US-based RedBird – which holds investments including a involvement successful the genitor institution of Liverpool FC and is seeking to jointly get the TV and movie concern Paramount – is putting unneurotic a woody that volition dilute IMI’s 75% holding successful the associated task to a level acceptable to the government.