Daily Mail owner in talks to buy Telegraph titles for £500m

The proprietor of the Daily Mail is successful talks to bargain the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister rubric for £500m, a woody that would yet extremity the more-than two-year hiatus implicit their future.

DMGT confirmed connected Saturday greeting Sky News's revelation connected the societal media level X that it had entered exclusive negotiations to bargain the broadsheet titles, little than 2 weeks aft their merchantability to a consortium led by RedBird Capital Partners collapsed.

In a statement, DMGT said the exclusivity play to harvester the 2 nationalist paper groups would beryllium utilized to "finalise the presumption of the transaction and to hole the indispensable regulatory submissions".

A woody to harvester the Mail and Telegraph titles volition necessitate scrutiny from the contention regulator, with the civilization secretary, Lisa Nandy, besides expected to beryllium progressive successful the process.

The illness of the RedBird-led woody came aft absorption from wrong the Telegraph's newsroom implicit reported links of its chairman, John Thornton, to influential Chinese authorities actors.

Lord Rothermere, DMGT's controlling shareholder, had intended to get a number involvement of conscionable nether 10% successful the Telegraph titles arsenic portion of the RedBird-led consortium.

An earlier woody projected by a consortium including RedBird and the Abu Dhabi state-owned concern steadfast IMI collapsed aft the authorities changed the instrumentality regarding overseas authorities ownership of nationalist newspapers.

IMI was to person owned a 15% involvement - the maximum permitted - nether the much caller deal.

"I person agelong admired the Daily Telegraph," Lord Rothermere said.

"My household and I person an enduring emotion of newspapers and for the journalists who marque them.

"The Daily Telegraph is Britain's largest and champion prime broadsheet newspaper, and I person grown up respecting it.

"It has a singular past and has played a captious relation successful shaping Britain's nationalist statement implicit galore decades.

"Chris Evans is an fantabulous editor, and we mean to springiness him the resources to put successful the newsroom.

"Under our ownership, the Daily Telegraph volition go a planetary brand, conscionable arsenic the Daily Mail has."

A spokesperson for RedBird IMI said: "DMGT and RedBird IMI person worked swiftly to scope the statement announced today, which volition soon beryllium submitted to the Secretary of State."

If the woody is completed, it would bring the Telegraph newspapers nether the aforesaid unchangeable of ownership arsenic titles including Metro, The one Paper and New Scientist.

DMGT said it planned "to put substantially successful TMG [Telegraph Media Group] with the purpose of accelerating its planetary expansion.

"It volition absorption peculiarly connected the USA, wherever the Daily Mail is already successful, with established editorial and commercialized operations."