Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Media myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
The sale of the Telegraph faces further delays after RedBird IMI gave the preferred bidder until at least Christmas to raise the money to acquire a national newspaper that has been without a permanent owner for about 18 months.
Dovid Efune, publisher of The New York Sun, is still in talks with a number of US funds to raise financing, according to those close to the matter, for a deal that is expected to be valued at about £550mn.
However, the funds will not be in place by the deadline for the exclusivity period on Friday this week, according to the people, leading to a further extension of the talks.
A person close to RedBird IMI said that there had been “progress made in these past few weeks, and [it was] confident of completing this deal in the near future. Exclusivity will therefore continue beyond Friday to enable us to conclude a successful sale”.
Another said that the extension would in effect be open ended but that a deal was expected before the end of the year. The extension means that the staff at the Telegraph could face entering another year without a permanent owner in place, with many now admitting to fatigue over a process that kicked off when the Barclay family lost control in summer 2023 over unpaid debts to Lloyds Banking Group.
Efune is relatively unknown in the UK despite being born in Manchester. He was previously editor-in-chief of the Algemeiner, a Jewish publication.
He has already lined up backing from former UK chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and Egyptian-born British billionaire Mohamed Mansour — a former Conservative party treasurer — for the US-led consortium to buy the Telegraph, according to people familiar with the matter.
Zahawi has maintained close links with IMI, the Abu Dhabi fund that is an owner of the Telegraph with US-based investment group RedBird. The joint venture needs to sell the 169-year-old conservative British national newspaper after the UK government blocked a deal that would have led to it being partly owned by a group backed by a foreign state.
A person familiar with the status of the financing discussions last week told the Financial Times that there was “strong momentum in [the] financing consortium and high confidence a deal will be reached given the status of these talks. Between debt and equity sources, there are dozens of funding parties involved in these discussions”.
RedBird IMI and Efune declined to comment.
