Former cabinet minister Zahawi pulls out of ‘British bid' for The Telegraph
The former Conservative cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi has pulled out of the 'British bid' for The Telegraph led by the publisher Dovid Efune.
The decision on Saturday leaves Mr Efune with an even steeper challenge as he attempts to gatecrash the planned takeover by the US private equity firm RedBird Capital.
Mr Zahawi, his family and friends accounted for £60m of the £170m of equity it is understood had been committed to the bid.
Even before losing the support, the consortium may have needed to raise a further £200m from shareholders to deliver the £550m bid he made alongside Mr Zahawi and the hedge fund manager Jeremy Hosking.
Mr Efune has planned to complete the offer with borrowing against The Telegraph's profits.
The approach has been rejected by IMI, the United Arab Emirates state media company. It is selling The Telegraph after its own attempt to take control was blocked last year following an outcry over press freedom.
That bid was made by a joint venture, RedBird IMI, in which RedBird was the junior partner having provided 25pc of the funding. Now the US private equity firm led by its founder Gerry Cardinale is in line to become the controlling shareholder in The Telegraph in a £500m deal.
He has signalled ambitious growth and investment plans to deliver a 'global counterpunch to The New York Times' from the centre-Right of the political spectrum.
Mr Cardinale is also in talks with at least three potential British minority co-investors, who include the owner of The Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere. After a proposed easing of the outright ban on foreign state shareholdings in newspapers, IMI is expected to retain a passive stake of up to 15pc.
With longstanding business and political links to the UAE, it is understood that Mr Zahawi pulled out after becoming concerned at Mr Efune's handling of the bid.
In recent days the publisher of the New York Sun website has sought to cast his approach as more British than RedBird's and sought to cast doubt on its sources of funding and ability to run The Telegraph successfully.
IMI has come out in public support of Mr Cardinale's bid, however, and it has been unclear how Mr Efune expects to disrupt their agreement in principle. Mr Cardinale has said none of RedBird's funding for the deal is drawn from sovereign wealth.
Mr Zahawi, who was Covid vaccines minister and briefly Chancellor, has played a significant role in the two-year saga over the ownership of The Telegraph.
A friend of both the Barclay family, the previous owners, and senior figures in the UAE, he was part of setting up a complex debt repayment deal that was intended to deliver the company into the hands of RedBird IMI. It included a £600m linked to the Barclay family's online shopping business Very, which saw Mr Zahawi become chairman.
Despite the failure of RedBird IMI's takeover of The Telegraph, he has persistently sought a role in its future. In recent months he has sought to put together a new bid that would help the UAE recoup its outlay.
It is understood Mr Cardinale does not intend to involve Mr Zahawi.
Mr Efune was unavailable for comment. In his most recent statements on the bid he said was confident he would be able to announce more investors soon.
Mr Zahawi declined to comment.
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We watched PSG win Champions League final with a professional head coach – here's what we learned
'They've scored five goals, but the defensive work was the key thing that won the game,' says Ian Cathro, verging on cliche. Paris Saint-Germain had just beaten Inter 5-0 in Munich, the biggest winning margin in a Champions League final but, while everyone marvelled at Desire Doue's brilliance, PSG's positional rotations and Vitinha's midfield orchestrating, Cathro's focus was elsewhere. Advertisement UEFA Pro Licence coaches watch the game differently. It's their job. Cathro — once an assistant to Nuno Espirito Santo at Rio Ave, Valencia, Wolverhampton Wanderers (where he coached PSG's Vitinha), Tottenham Hotspur and Al-Ittihad — this season led top-tier Portuguese side Estoril to their best finish in nine years. They forced the most offsides of any Primeira Liga team, ranked fourth for ball recoveries and sixth for final-third tackles. No wonder he admires PSG's out-of-possession approach. 'PSG's pressure has taken Inter out of their normal routines with the ball, and that's the thing that helps you grow into a final. When the magnitude of the game is higher, routines are more important. They've taken that away from them completely,' he says. 'Inter have a lot of mobility if you don't press the first ball circulation, but they can't get into funky positions if you start pressing them straight away — because they have to hold their spaces to take on that pressure.' He spots a detail with Achraf Hakimi's pressing on 23 minutes, just after PSG's second goal. 'As he was starting to run, he went three metres inside and stopped them slamming forward to a striker, forcing the ball to the wing-back (white arrow). That's when you know they've nailed the work, to stop those inside line passes (yellow arrow), they've never been unbalanced.' 'PSG are trying to press the ball outside and around. The break point would be if you were able to get the ball to the side and go diagonally in.' Inter could not in this instance. Joao Neves is too tight to Henrikh Mkhitaryan while Hakimi's pressure and readjustment blocks any inside pass, forcing Federico Dimarco long. Inter No 9 Lautaro Martinez has dropped deeper to try and support, with PSG centre-back Marquinhos staying touch-tight. Dimarco targets his strike partner, Marcus Thuram. Neves recovers and Willian Pacho closes Thuram to make a two-v-one for PSG. Neves tackles the France international. 'It's a lot of work,' Cathro says on coaching a high press. 'It's the most difficult bit to get to perfection. You're playing against highly proficient technical players with their own ideas.' When an almost identical pressing pattern happens eight minutes later, Cathro's praise switches to Vitinha. Dimarco is forced long once more, this time on his right foot, and Vitinha stays tight to Martinez before ducking as he reads that the striker won't be able to make the flick-on. The ball runs through to Marquinhos. 'What he has done there is excellent. Not competing for that ball, not letting that ball land, and now they can turn it into possession. PSG's pressing — the little details — has been really good.' In the second half, he lauds Ousmane Dembele for forcing Inter goalkeeper Yann Sommer to kick long. 'So if he has to go and lift it, he's lifting it either across his body and he has to do it early — because you'll get close to his right foot — or you force him on his left.' Against PSG's press, Sommer hit nearly 43 per cent of passes long (his season average is 28 per cent in Serie A and the Champions League). Luis Enrique's side made the first contact on half of his long passes. One sequence, with PSG 4-0 up on 77 minutes, makes Cathro say 'wow' (none of the goals did). 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I know it's not a goal, but that really needs to be rewarded because that's the intensity, concentration, and maintaining the focus. You know that that has such an impact on the opponent as well. It takes a lot away from them.' Advertisement 'I don't remember a situation where Inter have actually been able to pass feet-to-feet centrally while PSG have been pressing. PSG have really worked hard at taking away those lines inside, and they've forced predictable circulations of the ball, meaning they've been able to get closer and closer, force mistakes and regains. Their work against the ball has been exceptional.' His first-half critique of Inter is that they were 'close to passive'. He finds using the word as an absolute 'really offensive. It's not nice, but it was in that direction.' PSG completed over 100 passes inside the first 15 minutes — three sequences of 10+ passes — and Inter only recorded two tackles and two interceptions, content to slide and shuffle in their 5-3-2 block. 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It's Desire Doue's world and we're just living in it 🌟 The 19-year-old makes it two goals and an assist in the Champions League final 🔥 📺 @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK — Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 31, 2025 Presumably owing to the coaching Cathro gave Vitinha when he was on loan at Wolves in 2020-21? 'No, it's not! He'd done that himself, that goal,' he responds, enthusing about 'the intensity in all of his positioning and all of his actions and all his asks for the ball, deep in his own half, to then decide, 'I'll actually run forward'. It changed everything. I thought, 'Why are you running forward?' 'Technically, he had all of those things when he was at Wolves. The intensity he didn't have, or the taking responsibility aspect. It was just going through time. We didn't really do much for him. 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