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Ministers will be given notice on Wednesday that the Barclay family is ready to repay a £1.16bn loan to Lloyds Banking Group, paving the way for a public interest probe into the future ownership of The Daily Telegraph.
Sky News has learnt that Lloyds, the Barclays and RedBird IMI, the Abu Dhabi-backed vehicle which is funding the loan repayment, will write to Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, to give her 48 hours notice of the redemption.
Sources said the notice – which had been demanded by Ms Frazer last week – would see the funds being transferred to Lloyds as early as Friday, or at the start of next week.
That would trigger the dissolution of a court hearing in the British Virgin Islands to liquidate a Barclay family company tied to the newspaper’s ownership, and temporarily put the Barclays back in control of their shares in the broadsheet title.
It would also necessitate the removal of AlixPartners as receiver to some of the companies in the Telegraph’s corporate structure.
However, the family is unlikely to be able to exert any influence over the Telegraph or Spectator magazine because – as Sky News revealed on Tuesday – the government is contemplating issuing a hold-separate notice which would ring-fence the media assets from their legal owners.
RedBird IMI, which is led by the former CNN president Jeff Zucker, intends to take control of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph by converting a £600m chunk of its loan to the Barclays into equity.
That conversion will, however, be the subject of a Public Interest Intervention Notice (PIIN) which is expected to be issued by the culture secretary before the end of the week.
The PIIN will trigger an inquiry by Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority which could last for months.
RedBird IMI’s offer to fund the loan redemption has circumvented an auction of the Telegraph titles…
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