The owner of the Daily Mail is in talks to buy the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister title for \u00a3500 million, a deal that would finally end the more than two-year hiatus over their future.<\/p>\n
DMGT confirmed that the company had entered exclusive negotiations to buy the broadsheet titles less than two weeks after their sale to a consortium led by RedBird Capital Partners failed. In a statement, DMGT said the exclusivity period for the merger of the two national newspaper groups would be used to "determine the terms of the transaction and prepare the necessary regulatory filings."<\/p>\n
A deal to merge the Mail and Telegraph titles is subject to review by the competition regulator, with the Culture Minister also expected to be involved in the process. The RedBird-led deal collapsed after opposition from the Telegraph’s newsroom over alleged links by its chairman to influential Chinese state actors.<\/p>\n
Lord Rothermere, DMGT’s majority shareholder, had intended to acquire a minority stake of almost 10% in the Telegraph titles as part of the RedBird-led consortium. A previous deal proposed by a consortium of RedBird and Abu Dhabi state investment firm IMI collapsed after the government changed the law on foreign state ownership of national newspapers. Under the more recent deal, IMI would have owned a 15% stake – the maximum allowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have long admired the Daily Telegraph,\u201d said Lord Rothermere. \u201cMy family and I have an enduring love of newspapers and the journalists who produce them. The Daily Telegraph is Britain\u2019s largest and highest quality broadsheet newspaper and I grew up with that respect. It has a remarkable history and has played a crucial role in shaping the national debate in Britain over many decades.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cChris Evans is an excellent editor and we intend to give him the resources to invest in the newsroom. Under our ownership, the Daily Telegraph will become a global brand, just like the Daily Mail.\u201d DMGT said it planned to \u201cinvest significantly\u201d in TMG with the aim of accelerating international expansion. \u201cThe focus is particularly on the USA, where the Daily Mail is already successful and has established editorial and commercial activities.\u201d <\/p>\n
If the deal goes through, the Telegraph newspapers would be under the same ownership as titles such as Metro, The i Paper and New Scientist. A spokesman for RedBird IMI said: \u201cDMGT and RedBird IMI have worked quickly to reach the agreement announced today, which will shortly be submitted to the Secretary of State.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Acquisition Talks Underway The owner of the Daily Mail is in talks to buy the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister title for \u00a3500 million, a deal that would finally end the more than two-year hiatus over their future. Background on the Deal DMGT confirmed that the company had entered exclusive negotiations to buy the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2099,19105,19110,19107,12273,19109,19108,19112,19111,19113,134,16546,19106,4331],"class_list":{"0":"post-27457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-abu-dhabi","9":"tag-broadsheet","10":"tag-chris-evans-presenter","11":"tag-competition-regulator","12":"tag-daily-mail","13":"tag-enduring-love-film","14":"tag-harold-harmsworth-1st-viscount-rothermere","15":"tag-i-newspaper","16":"tag-metro-british-newspaper","17":"tag-new-scientist","18":"tag-robin-character","19":"tag-state-ownership","20":"tag-telegraphy","21":"tag-the-daily-telegraph"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27459,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27457\/revisions\/27459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}