The Scoop
The New York publisher who is now the lead bidder for the Telegraph, the British Conservative Party’s newspaper of record, is still working to assemble investors to back the £550 million deal.
Dovid Efune, the bidder, has approached the group founded by the conservative American business figure Charles Koch, Stand Together, the organization confirmed.
Efune, the publisher of the New York Sun, was reportedly poised to enter exclusive talks to buy the Telegraph Media Group from the Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund that acquired it from its owners, the Barclay Brothers, but was blocked by the British government from taking it over. A person familiar with the talks said the parties have still not entered the exclusivity period, which had been expected to begin Wednesday.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the deal was $550 million. It was £550 million.
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Efune, a conservative and pro-Israel Brit, runs a modest online publication and isn’t putting up much of his own cash for the deal. The newspaper’s newsroom believes that he is “likely to be a much more outspoken — and potentially divisive — owner than the media-shy Barclay family,” the Financial Times, which broke the news of the exclusivity period, reported.
Semafor reported last month that Efune and his bankers at Liontree had touted a list of financial backers that included US investment funds Oaktree; the family office of hedge-fund manager and philanthropist Michael Leffell; and the investment arm of the Canadian developer Beedie.
A spokesperson for Koch-backed Stand Together, which was formerly known as the Koch Network and invests in both private companies and non-profits, confirmed that the group had been approached about the deal. Efune didn’t respond to a text message seeking comment. (Stand Together is also an investor in Semafor.)
It’s unclear who else Efune has approached, though he does have one deep-pocketed British connection: the Tory peer Lord Michael Farmer, a Brexit backer and investor in the right-wing cable channel GB News, also disclosed that he is an investor in the New York Sun.
Notable
- Alphaville reports that there’s “a decent chance that Efune’s overture fizzles out, and other interested parties might return at the prospect of a lower price.”
- The Abu Dhabi-backed RedBird IMI investment fell apart after a very personal battle between former CNN chief Jeff Zucker and then-Spectator chairman Andrew Neil.