The flagship newspaper of the British conservatives, the Daily Telegraph, has been purchased by the American investor Gerry Cardinale for 500 million pounds (595 million euros). If approved by the authorities, the deal will close two years of uncertainty for the newspaper in which, literally, it has had no owner.
The last two decades of the Telegraph have been tumultuous. In 2005, it was sold during the dismantling of the business empire of the Canadian-British billionaire Conrad Black. Two years ago, the British bank Lloyd's seized the newspaper from its owners, the Barclay family (not related to Barclays Bank), due to non-payment of loans.
The leading candidate for acquiring the Telegraph was the fund International Media Investments (IMI), owned by the vice president of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, which offered 550 million pounds (about 660 million euros) and was willing to allow British investors to enter as minority partners. IMI's plan was to acquire the Telegraph Group, which also included the weekly magazine The Spectator.
The magazine, along with the newspaper, are the standard-bearers of the most traditional conservatism in the United Kingdom, with a fierce anti-European stance that, in the case of the Telegraph, leads it to distort headlines of what are, however, excellently documented and written news. Both are reorienting their editorial line towards positions closer to the far-right Reform Party than to the conservatives. The director of the Spectator is Michael Gove, who was a minister under conservatives Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
IMI made its offer at the end of 2023, triggering panic in the British establishment because it meant that two of the historical heads of the press in that country were going to be controlled by a foreign government (and, moreover, by an autocratic government). So, a year ago, the government of conservative Rishi Sunak approved a legislative reform that prohibited third states from taking control of media.
The Telegraph was once again left in limbo, while Lloyd's searched for a buyer worldwide. The Spectator ended up in September, for 100 million pounds (119 million euros), in the hands of financier Paul Marshall, co-owner of the television channel GB News, which is importing the editorial model of Fox News to the UK with isolationist, anti-European, and xenophobic content.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding its future, the Telegraph has reached a considerably high price. In December 2023, it reported just over a million weekly subscriptions, of which around 10% were for the print edition, 60% for the digital edition, and the rest for a series of specialized products, such as puzzles, travel, etc. If the purchase is completed, the new owner will try to expand the international presence of the media, especially in the United States, where it has already strengthened its activities in recent years. It is not expected that the editorial line will be modified by the new owner.