The bank forces the sale of The Daily Telegraph for a debt of about 1,000 million

The future of Telegraph Media Group (TMG), the company that publishes the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, appears to be on its way to a final auction. The Bank of Scotland launched a seizure of the Barclay family’s shares over failure to repay nearly £1,000m on expected terms. And making sure that the debts are not repaid at any time after months of negotiations. The bank hopes to expel the board members appointed by the current major shareholders to replace them with people directing the company’s activity until it can be sold.

The origin of this situation lies in the purchase of Talaat Moustafa Group in 2004 by David and Frederick BarclayThe first of them died in 2021 AD. The famous millionaire twin They have invested £665m in becoming one of the foremost sources of information for conservative readers in the UK After months of negotiations and legal disputes. Four years later, Lloyds, the parent company of Bank of Scotland, took over Family Loans which generated delinquent debt as part of the purchase of HBOS Bank in the context of the 2008 financial crisis.

At the moment, the entity has already appointed AlixPartners to act as trustee. This figure is responsible for representing an organization in bankruptcy or bankruptcy proceedings, and a Bank of Scotland spokesperson justifies this to The Guardian as “a final measure after numerous talks”, Which in no way precludes a possible agreement between the two parties at some point.

The new representative of the interests of the creditor bank explained to the same newspaper that “the judicial department is in no way connected with the financial health or performance of the business of The Telegraph or the Spectator”. The latter publication, which is considered the oldest weekly in the world, is also part of the conglomerate that the Barclay family organizes through companies in the tax haven of Jersey. AlixPartners is not making any operational changes to this media, neither in its business nor in its personnelThis is something that the family spokesman clarified in the same sense when specifying that the loans that the creditor bank wishes to implement are related to “the structure of public ownership of media assets and do not in any way affect the financial stability of the Talaat Moustafa Group.”

The most influential Tory newspaper will go up for sale, along with The Spectator weekly, due to unpaid loans from the Barclay brothers.

Indeed, The Telegraph’s position has improved over the years thanks, among other things, to its growing number of subscribers, which in December last year numbered more than 730,000, 586,000 of them digital. And in 2021, it collected nearly 30 million pounds in profits after difficult years. Regardless, the title is one of the most influential for the Conservative Party in the UK, which is crucial given that the next national election is due in 2025 and Labor is leading in the polls.

That explains why DMGT, which also publishes the conservative Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, is so concerned. That company had already expressed interest in the process in 2019, when a dispute between the Barclay brothers prompted one of them to consider a potential sale, though it’s not yet clear if regulators will allow it. The list of potential interested parties that have been mentioned in the sector also includes Axel Springer.