UAE ‘should not have had big role’ in Telegraph deal

THE leader of the blocked takeover bid for The Telegraph has admitted he should not have given Abu Dhabi such a big role in the deal.

Jeff Zucker, who heads Redbird IMI, said in hindsight that he would have changed the structure of the bid to reduce the involvement of the Gulf state.

Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s

CEO Council Summit in London, he said: “With regard to The Telegraph,

what we should have done is we should have structured the deal differently and changed the percentage of ownership of each of the entities that was within Redbird IMI.

“If we could go back and restructure earlier on, I think we would have done that. I think it probably would have sufficed.”

Redbird IMI, which is 75pc backed by International Media Investments (IMI), a vehicle controlled by Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-nahyan, formally abandoned its takeover bid for The Telegraph and The Spectator last week.

It came after the Government intervened to block the deal with a new law banning foreign state ownership of British newspapers. Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, had already put the transaction on hold as regulators carried out a review amid concerns about the impact on press freedom.

Asked what he would have done differently, Mr Zucker also said he would have closed the takeover deal for The Spectator, which was not subject to the same regulatory scrutiny, straight away.

The former CNN boss said his fund was “just being good citizens” by working with regulators and agreeing to carry out the transactions for the two titles at the same time.

He added: “If I could go back in time obviously we would have closed on The Spectator right away. We had the ability to do so and we should have done so.”

Redbird IMI has now kicked off an onward sale process for the two titles, which could be sold separately or as a package. The auction, which is being run by bankers at Raine and Robey Warshaw, is expected to attract interest from British media moguls including Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and GB News co-owner Sir Paul Marshall.

Mr Zucker said interest in The Telegraph and The Spectator had been “pretty robust”, adding he had been surprised by how many calls he had from prospective buyers outside the UK.

Mr Zucker said he expected the onward sale, which may also attract regulatory scrutiny, to “work itself out” in the next two to three months.