Boris Johnson has reportedly been courted for an executive role with the Daily Telegraph by a potential bidder for the newspaper group. The former Conservative prime minister is said to have been sounded out by his former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who has approached a number of wealthy backers about assembling a potential bid for the Telegraph newspapers and Spectator magazine. Zahawi has held preliminary, informal talks and raised the idea with investors of Johnson becoming the Telegraph’s global editor-in-chief if a bid is successful – although there is no firm agreement in place and there are no formal talks, according to Sky News.
Johnson currently writes a column for the Daily Mail although he has longstanding links with the Telegraph, where he began his career as its star Brussels correspondent writing exaggerated stories about EU regulations, before returning to the UK to be a political columnist and entering politics. Zahawi stepped down as an MP in July after he decided not to stand again in his Stratford-on-Avon constituency. He was originally involved in discussions over the future of the Telegraph as a “middleman”, introducing RedBird IMI, a United Arab Emirates-backed consortium, to the Barclay family. RedBird IMI – a partnership backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAE’s vice-president, and the US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners – took control of the Telegraph newspapers and the Spectator magazine in December when it repaid the Barclay family’s debts, including a £600m loan against the titles. However, RedBird IMI was effectively blocked from completing its planned deal for the Telegraph after the UK government drew up legislation earlier this year designed to stop foreign states or associated individuals from owning newspaper assets in the UK. The planned Abu Dhabi-led takeover of a newspaper widely seen as the in-house journal of the Conservative party had been fiercely opposed by many Tory MPs and peers. Their concerns about past breaches of press freedom in the UAE, which provided the financial backing for 75% of RedBird IMI, led ministers to draw up the new law. After it became clear the bid would not be approved under the new rules, RedBird IMI put the newspaper group back up for sale in April; the deadline for first-round bids closed in mid-July. The sale is expected to be completed later this year. A number of interested parties have already walked away, including Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, who pulled out of the auction owing to fears that his newspaper group would be drawn into a long and complex battle to allow any takeover to overcome competition and political hurdles. A bid from Lord Saatchi, the former Tory co-chair responsible for the party’s best-known advertising campaigns, and Lady de Rothschild has also not made it to the second round. A consortium led by the hedge fund tycoon Paul Marshall and backed by the billionaire Ken Griffin is among the interested bidders. Zahawi, who in May was named chair of the Barclay family-owned retailer Very Group, is said to have approached potential backers including the Reuben family, who own a stake in Newcastle United and a large property portfolio. Zahawi and Johnson declined to comment. It emerged in June that Telegraph Media Group fell into the red last year after it set aside nearly £280m to cover loans made to the Barclay family that may not be repaid. In its accounts, the group said that despite a resilient financial performance, it had made losses of £244.6m in 2023 – against profits of £33.3m in the previous year – due to the provision. The group also reported it had surpassed 1m subscriptions in August 2023, with subscriptions increasing from 734,000 in December 2022 to 1.03m in December 2023.