Telegraph deal saga drags into third year

The rightwing news group is in open revolt against prospective owner RedBird as regulators prepare to examine the purchase

- Barney Macintyre

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, is poised to refer the proposed sale of the Telegraph to regulators, taking the deal out of the hands of politicians in Westminster and the paper's senior editors.

US private equity firm RedBird Capital has lined up £150m in debt to fund a deal for the newspaper that has been mired in argument that has spilled into the pages of the paper.

Charles Moore, a former Telegraph editor, wrote an oped arguing RedBird had "overpaid"; that the paper was at risk from foreign interference due to the RedBird chair's alleged links to Beijing; and that the involvement of Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere's DMGT which has taken a 10% stake - might raise competition and media plurality concerns with regulators.