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The sale of the Telegraph faces further delays after RedBird IMI gave the preferred bidder until at least Christmas to raise the funds needed to acquire a national newspaper which has been without a permanent owner for around 18 months.
Dovid Efune, publisher of the New York Sun, is still in talks with a number of US funds to raise cash, according to people familiar with the matter, for a deal expected to be valued at around £550 million.
However, according to sources, the funds will not be in place before the exclusivity period deadline on Friday this week, leading to a further extension of negotiations.
A person close to RedBird IMI said there had been “progress made over the past few weeks, and (they were) confident of closing this deal in the near future.” The exclusivity will therefore continue beyond Friday to enable us to conclude a successful sale.”
Another said the extension would effectively be unlimited but that a deal was expected before the end of the year. The extension means that the staff of the Telegraph could face another year without a permanent owner in place, with many now admitting weariness with a process that began when the Barclay family lost control in the summer of 2023 over outstanding debts to Lloyds Banking Group.
Get it is relatively unknown in the UK despite being born in Manchester. He was previously editor-in-chief of the Algemeiner, a Jewish publication.
He already has aligned support former British chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and Egyptian-born British billionaire Mohamed Mansour – former Conservative Party treasurer – for the US-led consortium to buy the Telegraph, according to people familiar with the matter.
Zahawi has close ties with IMI, the Abu Dhabi fund that owns the Telegraph along with the American investment group RedBird. The joint venture is to sell Britain’s 169-year-old conservative national newspaper after the British government blocked a deal that would have led to it being part-owned by a foreign state-backed group.
A person familiar with the state of the funding discussions told the Financial Times last week that there was “strong momentum in (the) funding consortium and high confidence in reaching a deal given the state of these negotiations. Between debt and equity sources, dozens of lenders are involved in these discussions.”
RedBird IMI and Efune declined to comment.
