'We're sick of being the story' What next for the Telegraph after collapse of RedBird takeover?

The withdrawal of the bid for the Telegraph led by RedBird Capital has once again plunged the future of the titles into uncertainty, and raises questions over the dogged refusal of its sellers to drop the eye-watering £500m asking price that has driven away other potential suitors.

- Mark Sweney

Yesterday a consortium that also included the UAE fund International Media Investments (IMI) as well as the owner of the Daily Mail and the billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik abruptly dropped its bid.

RedBird has been under intense attack in recent weeks, with the Telegraph newsroom - and allies including the former editor Charles Moore and the former Spectator chief Fraser Nelson - publishing a string of pieces calling for its links to China to be investigated.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, had been due to announce a decision imminently on whether to let the bid progress, and also whether it should be scrutinised by the media regulator, Ofcom, and the competition watchdog.

The Telegraph is currently controlled by RedBird IMI, a joint venture between RedBird Capital and IMI, which is controlled by Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates and owner of Manchester City FC.

The RedBird Capital consortium had been attempting to engineer a deal to reduce IMI's stake to 15%, after RedBird IMI was forced to sell due to government legislation of the ownership of UK newspapers by foreign states.

Similarly, Lord Saatchi and Lynn Forester de Rothschild made a £350m bid - plus a promise of further payments dependent on performance - last August which was also rejected by RedBird IMI.

And the involvement of Lord Rothermere in the RedBird bid shows that the Daily Mail proprietor is keen to be involved in any potential future consortium.

After the publication of a opinion piece in the Telegraph by Charles Moore last month, in which he said the RedBird founder Gerry Cardinale had threatened to "go to war with our entire newsroom", editor Chris Evans had marshalled senior journalists to publish incendiary pieces criticising its putative owner.