Daily Telegraph front page, 14 July 2014
London Newspaper conglomerate Telegraph Media Group (TMG) is for sale. Law firm Alix Partners, which has been appointed as receiver, wants the media company after the previous owner family, Barclays, was unable to agree an agreement with Lloyds to repay an old loan said to be around £1bn (1.16bn euros). , which includes the daily Telegraph and also owns the conservative magazine The Spectator, which is forcibly sold.
Alix Partners said on Wednesday afternoon that it had initiated changes to the boards of certain B.UK Limited subsidiaries, including TMG and The Spectator, “to ensure control over the assets … and to facilitate a resolution, namely the sale of The Telegraph and the Audience Group.” Aidan Barclay is said to have been replaced as head of the newspaper group, according to British media reports.
One of the most important conservative voices in the British media is changing hands. In 2004, brothers Frederik and David Barclay took over the newspaper group from the US publisher Hollinger International for around 1.5 billion euros. At the time, Axel Springer Verlag was also interested in the Telegraph Group. The remainder of the loan taken out to buy Barclays later fell into the hands of Lloyds, which is now insisting on repayment.
The newspaper group was recently controlled by the Bermuda-based B.UK umbrella company, which was taken over at the insistence of bankers.
Lloyds is said to have written off the outstanding loan so it can book the proceeds of the sale as excess profits. Analysts put the newspaper group’s value at between £500m and £700m.
In London, investors from the Arab world and British media group DMGT, known as the Daily Mail, were mentioned as possible interested parties. Springer is also daring to take a new approach. Media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch is said to be interested in the influential magazine The Spectator.
family quarrel leads to decline
Since David Barclay’s death in 2021, the Barclay family has been rocked by controversy. “The loan in question relates to the ownership structure of the family’s media assets,” a Barclays family spokesman said, “and in no way affects TMG’s operations or financial stability.”
Telegraph Media Group had sales of £245m in the last financial year and a pre-tax profit of just under £30m. Both are well above last year’s levels. The Telegraph, together with The Sunday Telegraph, has over 750,000 subscribers.
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