Daily Mail owner in exclusive talks to buy The Telegraph for £500m

The Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere has entered exclusive discussions to acquire The Telegraph for £500m.

Lord Rothermere’s holding company DMGT said it “plans to invest substantially in Telegraph Media Group with the aim of accelerating its international expansion”.

The company is in talks with RedBird IMI, the joint venture between the United Arab Emirates and the US private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners.

They made their own tortured two-year bid for control of The Telegraph that collapsed last week amid continuing concerns over potential foreign state influence.

Lord Rothermere had lined up as a minority investor alongside RedBird and the UAE, and had been expected to take a stake of just 10pc. DMGT has longstanding business connections in the UAE via its oil and gas information arm.

DMGT said its takeover would comply with regulations on foreign state influence as “there will be no foreign state investment or capital in the funding structure”.

The planned addition of The Telegraph to DMGT’s existing portfolio, which, as well as The Daily and Sunday Mail titles, includes the i, Metro and New Scientist, is likely to trigger calls for an in-depth investigation of the impact on media plurality. The acquisition could leave Lord Rothermere in control of around half the national newspaper market.

It may prompt calls for him to sell either or both of Metro and the i.

DMGT said it was “confident any regulatory process can be concluded swiftly and positively”.

“Today’s media landscape is unrecognisable from a decade ago. News publishers have to compete against both vast global online platforms and myriad digital and social media news sources, some of them highly unreliable,” the group said in a statement.

Sky is expected to make similar arguments about the rise of tech giants in its ongoing attempted takeover of ITV’s broadcasting business, although concerns there mostly surround competition in advertising sales rather than the public interest in plurality of ownership.

The swift announcement of an agreement between RedBird, the UAE and DMGT comes days after peers demanded that Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, impose a transparent and independent sale process to guard against further uncertainty.

They echoed concerns raised in a Telegraph leader column that a foreign state should not be allowed to decide its next owner. It had emerged that a “poison pill” debt threatened to leave The Telegraph in unsustainable debt to the UAE.

Lord Rothermere said: “I have long admired The Daily Telegraph. My family and I have an enduring love of newspapers and for the journalists who make them. The Daily Telegraph is Britain’s largest and best quality broadsheet newspaper, and I have grown up respecting it.”