No foreign power will ever be allowed to buy a UK newspaper or magazine: that’s the upshot of this week’s debate in parliament. The new law, due in a few weeks, is also expected to rule out minority stakes. So what next for us – and the Telegraph? It has been said that the Emiratis may have been our best bet because no one else wants to invest in newspapers and magazines. The opposite is true. It’s a point that needs to be more widely understood, so I’d like to say something about the auction we came so close to completing last December.

Neither The Spectator nor the Telegraph need a penny of anyone else’s money

Some 22 bidders had contacted Goldman Sachs to say they were interested in The Spectator, the Telegraph, or both. It was an amazing list, including some of the most respected names in British and European publishing. There were also some names who had no publishing or political interests but who loved the magazine and wished to continue its traditions. When I saw the 22, I thought I’d have been happy with 19 of them and delighted with ten. Editors don’t choose proprietors (it works the other way around), but with the stellar list that Goldman had assembled there was a very high chance of a good ending. In the end, we had whittled the list down to a final four.

And investment? Crucially, neither The Spectator nor the Telegraph need a penny of anyone else’s money. We’re both profitable. All we need is an owner who will let us invest a bit more of our readers’ money in journalism. My ask would be an owner who would accept lower but still-respectable profit margins and let us invest the rest. That would give us all the cash we’d need to take our sales from 100,000 to 150,000 within four years.

I believe that anyone who ended up with The Spectator would agree to this fairly modest proposal (albeit with radical effects for us).

QOSHE - An update / How to sell The Spectator - Fraser Nelson
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An update / How to sell The Spectator

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15.03.2024

No foreign power will ever be allowed to buy a UK newspaper or magazine: that’s the upshot of this week’s debate in parliament. The new law, due in a few weeks, is also expected to rule out minority stakes. So what next for us – and the Telegraph? It has been said that the Emiratis may have been our best bet because no one else wants to invest in newspapers and magazines. The opposite is true. It’s a point that needs to be more widely understood, so........

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