The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, intends to ask the UK’s media and competition watchdogs to examine the proposed £500m takeover of the Telegraph titles by the owner of the Daily Mail.
Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) agreed a deal in November to buy the titles, in a move that will create a right-leaning publishing powerhouse.
Nandy said on Tuesday she was “minded to” task Ofcom with looking at the impact on media plurality of bringing the Daily and Sunday Telegraph titles together with the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
The Competition and Markets Authority will look at whether the proposed deal creates competition issues.
Nandy is expected shortly to issue a public interest intervention notice (PIIN), which starts an investigation process of up to 40 working days.
The investigation would also look at whether the right-leaning national news behemoth, which would be controlled by Lord Rothermere’s DMGT, would create public interest issues on the grounds of “sufficient plurality of persons with control”.
“My department has today written to the current and proposed owners of the Telegraph Media Group on my behalf to inform them that I am ‘minded to’ intervene,” said Nandy, in a written statement to parliament published on Tuesday. “It is important to note that I have not taken a final decision on intervention at this stage.”
She said she had also decided that the deal did not need to be scrutinised under the new foreign state influence regime.
Nandy has given Redbird IMI – a joint venture between the US private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners and the United Arab Emirates’ International Media Investments that took control of the Telegraph in 2023 – and DMGT until the 26 January to respond.
RedBird IMI was forced to put the newspaper group up for sale in April 2024 after the UK government legislated against foreign state ownership of British assets.
A subsequent deal with junior partner RedBird Capital, which included DMGT taking a stake of about 10%, fell through last November.
Rothermere has long coveted control of the Telegraph titles, having lost out to the Barclay brothers when they last came up for sale, in 2004.
If successful, they will join a stable of newspapers and magazines that includes Metro, the i Paper and New Scientist. DMGT already handles the advertising contract for the Telegraph titles.
As part of the offer, which was initially floated last month, DMGT has said the Mail and Telegraph editorial teams will remain separate and editorially independent, with investment provided to pursue the titles’ goal of becoming a global brand.
Rothermere’s group has said the deal would also give “much-needed certainty” to Telegraph staff, who have been stuck in limbo over a sale process that has dragged on for more than two years.
