Who would want to own The Daily Telegraph?

A look under the hood of RedBird Capital, and its founder, AC Milan owner Gerry Cardinale

What sort of person would aspire to own both AC Milan and The Daily Telegraph?

The answer – other than ‘me’, as I’d happily take either/both – is Gerry Cardinale, managing partner at RedBird Capital, which this week closed a £500m deal to acquire one of Britain’s last remaining broadsheets, The Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph – known to its detractors as ‘The Torygraph’ – is a right-of-centre newspaper, long favoured by establishment voices. Its nearest competitor, The Times, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and for years The Telegraph has been battling against that monolith. Its former owners, the mysterious identical twins known to all as ‘the Barclay Brothers’, were a major force in British publishing, but even they couldn’t compete with the clout and resources of the Murdoch empire. As their portfolio began to disintegrate following the death of David Barclay, speculation has been rife as to who would take control of the jewel in their media crown.

First, their weekly magazine, The Spectator, was snapped up by hedge fund billionaire turned political power player (and father of a Mumford and Sons banjoist), Sir Paul Marshall. Naturally, people wondered whether Marshall might add the Telegraph to his growing fiefdom (which includes GB News, a linear TV channel and digital video platform, and reactionary blog, UnHerd). No dice. Then there was talk of a Qatari-backed bid, which prompted huge paroxysms about the role of foreign states in British media. Eventually, the government landed on a rule: foreign states would only be allowed to take up to a 15% stake in a British newspaper.

This killed the Qatari bid, but opened the way for RedBird, which has partnered with IMI, an Abu Dhabi fund run by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahya, owner of Manchester City, as well as being an Emirati royal and both the UAE’s current Vice-President and its deputy Prime Minister. Busy bloke. Cardinale and Sheikh Mansour’s bid managed to sneak under the threshold imposed by Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, and, hey presto, The Daily Telegraph has a new owner. So what do does this acquisition, this investment, mean as health-check for British legacy media?