Telegraph bidder vows Abu Dhabi will be ‘passive investor’


August Graham, PA Business Reporter
Fri, 5 January 2024 



The company which is bidding to own The Daily Telegraph has said the newspaper’s journalists would have complete editorial freedom from its backers in Abu Dhabi.

Former CNN executive Jeff Zucker, who is leading the bid, told the BBC that United Arab Emirates deputy prime minister Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan would be a “passive investor”.

The sheikh is providing around three quarters of the money needed to buy the newspaper title and its sister publication The Sunday Telegraph.


Last year the Government got involved in the deal, amid worries that the authoritarian Gulf State could get a say over the journalism of an influential UK paper.

Mr Zucker, who works for investor RedBird IMI, said the bid was “American led”.

“We are confident that our commitments and the incredibly robust legally underpinned editorial protections that we have submitted will be sufficient to address any concerns,” he told the BBC.

“I think that taken collectively, there’s no UK newspaper that has stronger protections of editorial independence,” Mr Zucker said.

He promised to set up an editorial trust board which would ensure the titles’ independence and handle disputes.

The deal, which also includes The Spectator magazine, was hammered out after the Telegraph’s then owners the Barclay family did not pay back a £1 billion loan to Lloyds Bank.

The bank seized the titles and started trying to find someone to buy them.

However the Barclays were later able to pay off the debts and reclaim them thanks to money from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

As part of that deal the Barclays agreed to transfer ownership to RedBird IMI, which is set up as a joint venture between US investor RedBird Capital and Abu Dhabi’s International Media Investments.