CVC: Private equity beast behind La Liga and Six Nations mulls bid for The Telegraph
The private equity giant behind of Breitling, La Liga and the Six Nations rugby tournament is weighing up a bid for The Telegraph newspaper.
With the deadline deadline the newspaper’s auction fast approaching, CVC Capital Partners is believed to have entered the fray for the paper’s ownership, two decades after initially expressing an interest.
The potential bid from the private equity behemoth, which has nearly €200bn’s worth of assets under management, has surfaced just days after one of the frontrunners for the title pulled out of the running.
DMGT – the owner of the Daily Mail – announced a week ago on Wednesday that it was no longer considering a bid, amid fears its bid would be mired in challenges from the Competition and Markets Authority.
Now, Amsterdam-listed CVC, which also has a stake in the Women’s Tennis Association and City PR group Teneo, is planning a swoop the broadsheet, according to The Times.
The Telegraph’s current owner, Abu Dhabi-owned Redbird IMI, is being forced to sell the newspaper after being barred from owning it by the government over fears around a national newspaper being run by a foreign state.
Suitors have just two days to lodge bids in the auction for the right-leaning paper, formerly owned by the Barclay family.
Other names with a reported interest in the media company – which also includes the Spectator, widely viewed as the Conservative Party’s ‘house magazine’ – include Sir Paul Marshall, the former hedge fund manager who now has a major stake in GB News and founded the libertarian current affairs outlet Unherd.
But earlier this week, a Sky News report cast doubt over the likelihood of a bid from Marshall, who was said be sceptical of Redbird IMI’s implied £600m valuation of the paper.
Ad guru Lord Saatchi – the man behind the Conservatives’ Labour Isn’t Working poster in the 1979 general election – is also reported to be mulling a bid, as is the the National World, which owns the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman.
CVC’s potential interest comes two decades after it first sniffed around The Telegraph when it was up for sale in 2004 when the paper ultimately went to the Barclay brothers, David and Frederick.
CVC Capital declined to comment.