The Telegraph sale collapses as US private equity firm drops its bid for the UK newspaper

RedBird Capital withdrew its £500 million bid for the Telegraph Media Group on Friday, leaving the fate of the major British publisher unclear.

“RedBird has today withdrawn its bid for the Telegraph Media Group,” a representative for private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners told CNN. “We remain fully confident that the Telegraph and its world-class team have a bright future ahead of them and will work hard to secure a solution which is in the best interests of employees and readers.”

RedBird’s decision not to pursue The Telegraph throws a wrench in the outlet’s bid to grow its business in the United States, even as its rivals — including the Daily Mail, the BBC and The Guardian — have expanded in North America over the last few years.

The reversal comes months after RedBird announced in May that it had reached an in-principle agreement to acquire The Telegraph Media Group for roughly $657 million. At the time, that deal seemed to mark the end of the media company’s two-year saga to find new ownership.

Under the deal, RedBird was to become the sole controlling owner of The Telegraph, the right-leaning British newspaper founded in 1855. The private equity firm was set to invest in The Telegraph’s digital operation in a bid to expand the outlet’s foothold in the US and grow subscriptions overall.

The Telegraph’s sale was long stymied by the British government’s restrictions on foreign government investments in media ownership, which capped foreign state-owned investments into a publisher at 15%.

RedBird, with the help of International Media Investments (IMI) — an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family — helped the Barclay family regain control of The Telegraph in December 2023, but the British government barred the transfer of ownership.

The May 2025 deal would have allowed IMI to retain a 15% investment, meeting that limit. However, The Telegraph’s own journalists have questioned RedBird’s ties to China. In August, a coalition of human rights and freedom of expression organisations raised similar concerns in an open letter to Britain’s secretary of state for culture, media and sport.

RedBird has denied the alleged ties to Beijing. IMI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Now, with RedBird out of the picture, the right-leaning media empire’s future returns to a state of uncertainty.

“Our immediate priority is to minimise disruption to the business and work with all stakeholders, including DCMS, towards a solution,” a spokesperson for Telegraph Media Group Holdings told CNN.

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