\n RedBird Capital withdrew its \u00a3500 million bid for the Telegraph Media Group on Friday, leaving the fate of the major British publisher unclear.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cRedBird has today withdrawn its bid for the Telegraph Media Group,\u201d a representative for private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners told CNN. \u201cWe remain fully confident that the Telegraph and its world-class team have a bright future ahead of them and will work hard to secure a solution which is in the best interests of employees and readers.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n RedBird\u2019s decision not to pursue The Telegraph throws a wrench in the outlet\u2019s bid to grow its business in the United States, even as its rivals \u2014 including the Daily Mail, the BBC and The Guardian \u2014 have expanded in North America over the last few years.\n <\/p>\n
\n The reversal comes months after RedBird announced in May that it had reached an in-principle agreement<\/a> to acquire The Telegraph Media Group for roughly $657 million. At the time, that deal seemed to mark the end of the media company\u2019s two-year saga <\/strong>to find new ownership.\n <\/p>\n \n Under the deal, RedBird was to become the sole controlling owner of The Telegraph, the right-leaning British newspaper founded in 1855. The private equity firm was set to invest in The Telegraph\u2019s digital operation in a bid to expand the outlet\u2019s foothold in the US and grow subscriptions overall.\n <\/p>\n \n The Telegraph\u2019s sale was long stymied by the British government\u2019s restrictions on foreign government investments in media ownership, which capped foreign state-owned investments into a publisher at 15%.\n <\/p>\n \n RedBird, with the help of International Media Investments (IMI) \u2014 an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed a member of Abu Dhabi\u2019s ruling family \u2014 helped the Barclay family regain control of The Telegraph in December 2023, but the British government barred the transfer of ownership.\n <\/p>\n \n The May 2025 deal would have allowed IMI to retain a 15% investment, meeting that limit. However, The Telegraph\u2019s own journalists have questioned RedBird\u2019s ties to China<\/a>. In August, a coalition of human rights and freedom of expression organisations raised similar concerns in an open letter<\/a> to Britain\u2019s secretary of state for culture, media and sport.\n <\/p>\n \n RedBird has denied the alleged ties to Beijing. IMI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n <\/p>\n \n Now, with RedBird out of the picture, the right-leaning media empire\u2019s future returns to a state of uncertainty.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cOur immediate priority is to minimise disruption to the business and work with all stakeholders, including DCMS, towards a solution,\u201d a spokesperson for <\/strong>Telegraph Media Group Holdings <\/strong>told CNN.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RedBird Capital withdrew its \u00a3500 million bid for the Telegraph Media Group on Friday, leaving the fate of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-570397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115549522037622688","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}