A fresh auction looms for The Telegraph as Dovid Efune has failed so far to secure funding for his £500m-plus takeover bid.
Efune is the owner of The New York Sun, a once famous brand but now a fairly obscure news website. The Telegraph itself describes him as a “little-known entrepreneur” in today’s newspaper.
The title reports that $200bn US investor Oaktree Capital has left talks to fund the deal, leaving questions over how Efune will finance it.
Efune has been in exclusive talks to buy The Telegraph from Redbird IMI since mid-October and is understood to have two weeks left to get his financing in place.
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A spokesperson for Efune told The Telegraph that Oaktree’s proposal for debt financing was “not competitive, so we have decided not to proceed with them”.
The spokesperson said: “We are progressing on debt financing with a number of reputable institutions and have high confidence in our financing path.”
Abu Dhabi-backed Redbird IMI has been forced to sell The Telegraph by new legislation banning state ownership of newspapers. The fund paid £600m for the Telegraph and Spectator titles in December last year and sold The Spectator to Paul Marshall for £100m in September.
Other possible bidders for the Telegraph include DMGT, National World and Lord Saatchi although Mail owner DMGT has previously pulled away because of the new legislation and advertising mogul Lord Saatchi had a bid rejected in August.
The ownership of The Telegraph has been in limbo since June 2023 when it was seized by Lloyds Banking Group to recoup the Barclay family’s unpaid debts.
Telegraph Media Group revenue grew 5.4% to £268m in 2023 and operating profit rose 35% to £54m.
Although the Daily Telegraph print edition is in long-term decline, selling fewer than 200,000 copies per day, the group claims to have more than one million subscribers (70% of which are digital) including those of the Chelsea Magazine Company which it acquired last year.
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