Daily Mail owner DMGT has pulled out of the race to own The Telegraph conceding that it would become embroiled in a protracted and knotty process with competition authorities, blaming to updated governing rules and the “new government”.
The media group run by Lord Rothermere, whose family founded the Daily Mail in 1896, has told bankers overseeing the sale of the Telegraph and Spectator magazine that it would not be making a bid, The Times reported.
The decision comes just weeks after the papers’ current proprietor, the Abu Dhabi-backed vehicle Redbird IMI, kicked off an auction for the titles after it was blocked from owning the paper by the government due to the entity’s ultimate owners being a foreign state.
A spokesman for DMGT said: “DMGT believes the new statutory regime governing the ownership of UK newspapers is overly restrictive, and could curtail our ability to raise capital for our news publishing and other media businesses – both now and in the future.
“With a new government in place, we would face a heightened risk of a protracted regulatory process if we were to win the auction. This would cast further uncertainty over The Telegraph and could disrupt our plan to grow DMGT’s diverse stable of news titles.”
Rothermere’s DMGT was widely regarded to be one of the front-runners to take the reins of the broadsheet and its withdrawal is not the first major publisher to be deterred from making a bid on competition grounds.
Last year, the Rupert Murchoch-owned News UK, which runs The Times, The Sun and Talk Radio, was said to have been weighing up a bid, but reigned to only being able to buy the Spectator.
With the July 19 deadline for bids fast approaching, DMGT’s withdrawal leaves Paul Marshall, the former hedge fund boss who now owns GB News and the current affairs online magazine Unherd, in the driving seat for auction.
But other media heavyweights are rumoured to be mulling a bid of their own, including Lord Saatchi, the former ad exec behind Margaret Thatcher’s Labour Isn’t Working campaign.