The United Arab Emirates has a mixed record on free speech. Detention of journalists is not uncommon and the nation ranked 145th out of 180 countries included in a press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.
Now a member of the ruling elite has set his sights on a UK newspaper whose roots can be traced back more than 100 years before the official creation of the Gulf state.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s vice-president, best known in the UK for his ownership of Manchester City football club, has thrown his considerable financial heft behind RedBird IMI, an investment consortium looking to take control of the Telegraph and its stablemate, the Spectator magazine.
The joint venture, a partnership between the sheikh’s International Media Investments (IMI) fund and the US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners, is reportedly close to sealing a deal to take over the titles in exchange for repaying £1.15bn of debts owed to Lloyds Banking Group by its current owners, the billionaire Barclay family.
The main obstacle is a potential UK government review of the deal. The culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, said on Wednesday that she was “minded to” refer the case to the media regulator, Ofcom, over public interest concerns.
Grounds for ministers to refer a media takeover to the watchdog include the need for accurate presentation of news, free expression of opinion and – specifically regarding newspapers – a sufficient plurality of views and persons with control of ownership.
In a letter to RedBird IMI on Wednesday, Frazer wrote that she was aware it had “links to media organisations that have been critiqued for partisan views and therefore believes there may be an impact on the plurality of views of newspapers in the UK”.
IMI’s current media properties include Sky News Arabia, a regional joint venture with CNN, and an Abu Dhabi English-language daily newspaper, the National. Until last year, it was also home to an Emirati print newspaper called al-Roeya.
In September, local media reported the paper’s print edition had been shut down and dozens of employees sacked, just weeks after al-Roeya ran a story about how Emiratis were struggling with higher fuel prices following the invasion of Ukraine. After the Gulf state withdrew fuel subsidies that kept prices low, some motorists had taken to driving over the border to Oman where they could fill up for half the price.
In response to reports about the closure by Associated Press (AP), among others, IMI said at the time it was “not connected in any way” with the implicit criticisms of the UAE regime in al-Roeya’s report, but instead was part of a long-planned transformation of the publication into an Arabic-language business outlet in partnership with CNN.
Al-Roeya’s article did not stay online for long. It was deleted from the internet, according to AP.
RedBird IMI is expected to offer the UK government additional assurances on editorial independence, including a pledge that IMI will be a “passive” partner under a legally binding agreement. A spokesperson told the Guardian that it would retain the Telegraph and Spectator editorial teams, adding that independence was “essential to protecting their reputation and credibility.”
The joint venture is run by Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN. Its US half, RedBird, brings a more diverse array of experience to the table, including partnerships with entities ranging from oil and gas companies to professional wrestlers. That portfolio spans a sprawling array of equity investments in businesses across sectors including sport, media, aviation, fast food, insurance and hospitality.
Founded by investment guru Gerry Cardinale, it has stakes in the Fenway Sports Group behind Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox baseball team, as well as in Italian football titans AC Milan and the Alpine Formula One team.
RedBird is also a co-investor with basketball hero LeBron James and has backed film ventures in partnership with stars such as Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Tom Cruise. Film projects include this summer’s Air, which squeezed one hour and 51 minutes of cinema out of the story of Nike launching a range of trainers.
Some of RedBird’s investments appear to tally culturally with its targeting of Britain’s best-read rightwing broadsheet. It invests in at least three oil and gas companies, and holds a stake in Majority Strategies, a “political consulting” company that claims to specialise in “influencing the behaviour and opinion of voters”.
Its website boasts of its role in a string of successful campaigns, all for Republican candidates in the US. These include Glenn Jacobs, the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, better known as the masked WWE wrestler Kane.
Fellow wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been linked to a presidential run and is busy with his own partnership with RedBird, a new American football league called the XFL.
While IMI and RedBird bring different attributes to the partnership, they do have one thing in common. Of the five people on Abu Dhabi-based IMI’s global executive leadership team, one is a woman. Its American joint venture partner has an even lower level of female representation. The RedBird website lists 14 senior staff, including partners and its chief financial officer. Only one of the 14 is a woman, although two-thirds of its entire staff are female.
“Diversity and empowerment has been a cornerstone of our firm and investment philosophy since inception,” said a spokesperson.
At present, the Telegraph Media Group does a little better in the gender equality stakes, with three women on an 11-strong executive team.
