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The Abu Dhabi-backed vehicle which has agreed to buy The Daily Telegraph believes it will control the newspaper’s destiny even if its deal is blocked by regulators.
Sky News has learnt that RedBird IMI informed the independent directors of the Telegraph’s parent company this week that it will determine the title’s future ownership even in the event that it is prevented from taking control.
Sources said the Gulf-based investor – a joint venture between RedBird of the US and Abu Dhabi-based IMI – was keen to dispel the idea that either the Telegraph’s independent directors or the Barclay family, the newspaper’s beneficial owners, would oversee any future auction.
RedBird IMI owns the £1.16bn loan to the Barclay family that was used to repay Lloyds Banking Group last month, with £600m of that earmarked for conversion into control of the Telegraph’s equity.
The Spectator magazine would also form part of that deal.
Because RedBird IMI also owns a call option which can be exercised in exchange for ownership of the media assets, it believes it would be “in total control” of any process should the government block the acquisition, a source said.
“In such an eventuality, RedBird IMI would be free to sell the loan and call option to whoever they wished,” they added.
Another insider said the only circumstance in which that scenario would not play out would be if RedBird IMI itself withdrew from the Telegraph transaction.
That scenario was described as “vanishingly unlikely” by the insider on Wednesday, with RedBird IMI said to remain confident that the editorial protections that it has submitted to Ofcom will address any concerns and pave the way for the deal to be approved.
The culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, has ordered an inquiry by Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority into…
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