The Spectator, a 196-year-old magazine with a prominent place in British political life and longstanding ties to the Conservative Party, was on Tuesday sold to a hedge fund tycoon whose media interests also include a right-wing TV channel that has antagonized the country’s broadcasting regulator.
In a deal worth 100 million pounds, or $131 million, Paul Marshall, a press-shy multimillionaire who made his fortune through the hedge fund he co-founded, Marshall Wace, took control of The Spectator.
In recent years Mr. Marshall has reshaped himself as a media baron. He founded Unherd, a news and opinion website, and became a leading investor in the news channel GB News, which began broadcasting in 2021 and has emerged as a platform for hard-right political figures like Nigel Farage, who has his own prime-time talk show.
For more than three decades, The Spectator, which describes itself as “the oldest continuously published weekly in the English language,” was owned by the same publishing group as The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, two influential Conservative-leaning newspapers.
The Telegraph Media Group was owned by the Barclay family until last year, when RedBird IMI, a consortium backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the vice president of the United Arab Emirates, and the American investment firm RedBird Capital, led by the American media executive Jeff Zucker, assumed control of the debt-laden company.
RedBird IMI, which took over the Barclay family’s debts, tried to complete its acquisition of The Telegraph group and The Spectator but was thwarted by British regulators because of antitrust and media freedom concerns.
Earlier this year, the government drafted legislation to block foreign states or associated individuals from owning British newspaper assets, prompting RedBird IMI to put The Spectator and Telegraph up for sale.
For Mr. Zucker, a former president of CNN, the decision dashed his audacious attempt to break into Britain’s media business. Since then, he has been looking for alternative buyers to make good on his initial investment.
“Our aim with this phase of the process has been to secure ownership from a viable buyer for The Spectator,” Mr. Zucker said in a statement. “We were committed to moving quickly and capitalizing on the strength of the asset and the significant interest from an eager marketplace.”
Bids for the Telegraph newspapers are due later in the month, and British press reports say Mr. Marshall is one of at least two finalists for those, along with National World, a newspaper group run by David Montgomery, a Northern Irish media executive and former tabloid editor with a reputation for cost cutting.
Known for its lively, often provocative, journalism, The Spectator has 122,500 paid subscriptions, of which 93,000 are in Britain, according to figures it released last year.
But it is the publication’s influence and prestige — along with its storied, sometimes incestuous, connections to the Conservative Party — that made it attractive to a string of previous owners.
Past editors of The Spectator include Boris Johnson, a former prime minister, and Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor of the Exchequer. The publication is famous for sponsoring a Parliamentarian of the Year award, which is a fixture on the political calendar.
It also hosts a summer party in London and a reception at the annual Conservative Party conference, where Pol Roger champagne, Winston Churchill’s favorite, flows freely — one reason, perhaps, why Alexander Chancellor, a former editor, once said, “The Spectator is more of a cocktail party than a political party.”
Whether the publication’s notoriously louche, mischievous journalistic culture will survive the change of ownership remains unclear.
Mr. Marshall, 65, is an evangelical Christian. A former supporter of the centrist Liberal Democrats, he quit that party in 2015 and supported the campaign for Brexit.
Alongside Legatum, a Dubai-based investment firm, he has invested heavily in GB News which has pushed the boundaries of the broadcasting code that regulates programming in Britain and imposes strict rules on political impartiality.
GB News sometimes seems to model itself on Fox News, giving a platform to hard-right politicians including Mr. Farage, the former Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Lee Anderson, a onetime Conservative lawmaker who defected to Mr. Farage’s Reform U.K. party, which campaigns against immigration.
The channel has received several rebukes from the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, for failing to observe impartiality obligations and, in one case, airing misogynistic views.
GB News has not yet broken even. It recorded pretax losses of £42.4 million pounds for the year to the end of May 2023, up from £30.7 million a year earlier. The broadcaster has pointed to a growing digital audience, saying its online page views rose 431 percent to 51.9 million.
Following the sale of The Spectator, the next pressing question is how the battle for ownership of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph will be resolved. That sale is being run separately.
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