Capital Economy, Business and Finance
One of the world’s richest hedge fund managers has been linked to a bid by Sir Paul Marshall, the joint owner of GB News, to buy the Telegraph. Ken Griffin’s net worth is put at $35 billion (dwarfing Marshall’s $766 million). He is a Harvard graduate and US citizen with a prominent place on the centre-right of American politics – he styles himself a defender of free speech and donated $100 million to Republican candidates in the 2020 midterm campaign, though nothing to Trump in 2016. His involvement in Marshall’s Telegraph bid is said to be in a personal rather than a business capacity, but his vast fortune will add important financial heft given other contenders are said to be lining up hundreds of millions of dollars in the UAE. An auction for the paper, run by Goldman Sachs, could begin as early as this month. If Marshall prevails, he will have established himself as a dominant new force on the right of the British media landscape. Confounding sceptics, GB News has gained steadily in its ratings contest with the UK’s other 24-hour news channels, Sky News and the BBC News Channel. For the first time last week, in a timeslot dominated by heated talk of Russell Brand’s alleged sexual misconduct, it beat them both.
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