The Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, faces a potential High Court challenge from the FSU regarding her handling of the blocked takeover of the Telegraph by the RedBird IMI investment fund. The fund is a state-backed enterprise of the United Arab Emirates and owned by Sheikh Mansour, a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family. (His other possessions include Manchester City.)
In a letter sent last month, the FSU warned Ms Nandy that we’re prepared to launch judicial review proceedings unless she enforces recent laws designed to prohibit foreign states from influencing or controlling British newspapers.
These laws, introduced in March last year, require the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to issue a Foreign State Intervention Notice (FSIN) to the Competition and Markets Authority if there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect that a “foreign state newspaper merger situation” is under way or contemplated. The statutory threshold for issuing an FSIN is met if a foreign state acquires or attempts to acquire “the right or ability to direct, control or influence to any extent the policy or activities” of a UK newspaper: all of which an FSIN would block.
The timing of the legislation was no coincidence. It was brought in specifically as a response to RedBird IMI’s potential Telegraph takeover, which began in November 2023 when the fund provided a substantial loan to the paper’s then-owners, the Barclay family, enabling them to pay off their debts. Crucially, this financial agreement gave RedBird IMI a ‘call option’ – effectively, the right to convert the loan into outright ownership of the Telegraph.
But in April 2024, following fierce opposition from politicians and journalists of all stripes, RedBird IMI was prevented from completing a proposed purchase and told to sell on its option to buy: something it assured the government it would swiftly do. More than a year later, this still hasn’t happened, leaving the Telegraph strategically paralysed at a critical moment for print and digital media.
Another thing that hasn’t happened, though, is any action from Ms Nandy under the new laws, despite RedBird IMI’s subsequent behaviour. In January 2024 the Conservative government issued a separate discretionary measure – pithily known as the Public Interest Merger Reference (Telegraph Media Group Limited) (Pre-emptive Action) Order – to temporarily prevent significant managerial changes at the Telegraph without government approval. But critics, including Lord Young and the FSU, argue that this discretionary approach has proved inadequate and that the later statutory obligations to issue the much stricter FSIN have since been triggered.
Indeed, the FSU’s letter to Ms Nandy highlighted documented evidence of serious interference by RedBird IMI in the Telegraph’soperational management. Ms Nandy, however, stuck to her non-interventionist guns, stating in her reply that the fund’s actions weren’t enough to prompt an FSIN and claiming there had been no “significant changes to the organisational structure or management responsibilities in the business”.
Last week, Lord Young publicly challenged this response in a Lords debate on the Communications and Digital Committee’s recent report, The Future of News – a debate initiated by Baroness Stowell, the Conservative peer who played a pivotal role in pressuring Rishi Sunak’s government to block RedBird IMI’s initial takeover attempt.
Describing Ms Nandy’s response as “wholly unsatisfactory”, Lord Young argued that her interpretation of the statutory threshold contradicted clear evidence already published by the Telegraph itself – not least in a story on 17th January unambiguously headlined “Telegraph Urged to Slash Jobs and ‘Forget’ Sale as Abu Dhabi Fund Applies Pressure”. This described the explicit attempts by RedBird IMI to influence the newspaper’s operational decisions by pressing executives to make significant staff cuts and scale back editorial investments.
Lord Young told peers that Ms Nandy “needs to act before it is too late”, adding: “The committee’s report is entitled The Future of News, and I do not think I am the only member of this House who thinks that that future will be pretty bleak if it does not include the Telegraph.”
The FSU’s threatened judicial review could prove embarrassing for the government, which has already faced diplomatic tensions with the United Arab Emirates over its handling of the Telegraph saga. Such a review might, for example, force the disclosure of a sensitive Ofcom report on the UAE’s approach to press freedom, written last year but withheld from publication following those assurances by RedBird IMI that it would swiftly secure an onward sale.
The dispute about the future of the Telegraph raises serious questions about media independence and transparency in the UK. Permitting foreign states to influence or control British media organisations risks undermining editorial freedom and press plurality – both crucial for holding power accountable in a democracy.
There’s more on this story here.
