Telegraph bidder struggles to fund £550m offer

The Telegraph’s exclusive bidder, Dovid Efune, is battling to fund his £550 million offer after asset manager Oaktree left talks last week. Efune has until the end of this month to show he is suitable to buy the titles; his spokesperson insisted he was confident of securing the money.

Should the owner of the New York Sun fail, expect another auction or fresh bidders. RedBird IMI – majority-owned by the vice-president of the UAE, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan – paid £600 million for the paper last December.

The Sunak government promptly passed a law blocking foreign states or associated individuals from owning UK newspapers, forcing the resale of the paper.

The Telegraph is in rude health: at the end of last year it had more than a million subscribers and a yearly rise in operating profits of 35 per cent. All the same, bidders seem hard to come by.

The originally enthusiastic Paul Marshall, backer of GB News, secured the Spectator for £100 million in September but did not renew his bid for the Telegraph.