Murdoch seeks 'to join Daily Mail and UAE to buy Telegraph Media'

The Daily Telegraph newspaper and the Spectator magazine have out-sized influence in British politics, and are seen as a mouthpiece for the Tories.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and the publisher of the UK’s Daily Mail tabloid are weighing an offer for the company that owns The Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine, alongside United Arab Emirates-backed investment fund RedBird, people familiar with the matter have said.

Such a bid would reduce RedBird’s ultimate stake in the Telegraph Media Group and may ease UK government concerns over control of the legacy media outlet, said the sources. Jonathan Harmsworth’s Daily Mail & General Trust and News Corp’s News UK unit have held back-channel conversations on how to structure a deal, they said.

The discussions are preliminary and it is not clear whether parties would reach an agreement and whether they could ultimately split up the assets, they said. Mr Murdoch has coveted the Spectator for decades, and has previously bid for it, Bloomberg reported last year. “DMGT is not involved in any discussions with News Corp about taking a stake in The Telegraph,” a DMGT spokesperson said. A representative for News UK declined to comment. A spokesperson for RedBird said it is not involved in the discussions and declined to comment further.

The nearly 170-year-old The Daily Telegraph newspaper and the Spectator magazine have out-sized influence in British politics, and are seen as a mouthpiece for the Tories. The potential for a foreign government to gain control over the assets — via UAE deputy prime minister Sheikh Mansour’s majority holding in RedBird — has caused an uproar in Westminster.

Bloomberg