The Times is reporting Lloyds has appointed AlixPartners as receivers to B.UK, the Barclay family’s holding company that controls shares in Telegraph Media Group and Spectator (1828) Limited. The Telegraph and the Speccie are about to be up for sale…
Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are reportedly on the shortlist to handle the sale, according to Sky News. Lloyds are said to value the Telegraph titles at a very optimistic £600 million. Time to open the wallet…
Both the Telegraph and the Spectator could possibly be on the market “within days” as Lloyds Banking Group looks to recover debts from owners, the Barclay family. Sky News reports that Lloyds intends to select an investment bank to kick off an “immediate” auction process, with one source suggesting AlixPartners had already been appointed.
Although details are shady, reports suggest the loan owed by the Telegraph’s parent company is in the “hundreds of millions of pounds”. A spokesman for the Telegraph Media Group boasted of strong subscriber numbers, now reaching 750,000, and warned that “speculation about the business entering administration is unfounded and irresponsible”. As a spokesman for the Barclay family speculated about the business entering administration:
“The loans in question are related to the family’s overarching ownership structure of its media assets. They do not, in any way, affect the operations or financial stability of Telegraph Media Group. The businesses within our portfolio continue to trade strongly”.
The Barclay brothers paid £665 million for the Telegraph in 2004. On a commercial basis, it’s probably now worth perhaps half that…
UPDATE: AlixPartners have been appointed as receivers to the Barclay family’s holding company. Read more here…
Yesterday Guido reported on the Telegraph’s “Diversity Download” newsletter, which is sent to all TMG staff this week to remind hacks of useful upcoming dates in their calendars, like Disability Awareness Month, South Asian Heritage Month, and International Men’s Day. There were also a few invites to important internal workshops, including a free sex education class.
There’s more. Once Chris Evans and Ben Riley-Smith have learned about their hormonal health, a few weeks later they can head along to the Out Loud Network’s “day of education and celebration” to mark Pride Month. On 28th June, the Network will be holding an hour-long “lunch and learn” session where they will be taught about the “importance of Pride and hear from LGBTQIA+ colleagues about their own lived experiences”. Not one to miss. The Out Loud Network claims its purpose is to “drive engagement in LGBTQ+ issues (what happened to the ‘IA’?) at TMG”…
The only pity is this training wasn’t given sooner. Guido hears Telegraph staff were asked in a recent internal questionnaire how best to describe their gender. One of the answers was “non-binary or gender non-conforming”…
Telegraph hacks had an important email land in their inboxes this morning, courtesy of the Telegraph Media Group’s (TMG) Diversity and Inclusion team. Yes, that team exists.
The email is the team’s “Diversity Download” newsletter, which contains a whole trove of woke HR-speak that wouldn’t be out of place on Pink News – rather than, say, the paper that dedicates hundreds of column inches to fighting the Culture War. Next week, for example, hacks will be offered free sex education classes on “reproductive and sexual health”…
The clinic is part of the Telegraph’s new partnership with Hertility, which offers both men and women tips and tricks for managing their “hormonal health“. For hacks interested, it’s next Wednesday at 1p.m. in the Presentation Theatre…
For those who want to dive deeper, the Diversity and Inclusion team also sent a presentation explaining their work and ethos. Apparently they’re set on “improving the culture”…
Brought to you by the same paper that just last week published this piece by Allister Heath: “The woke blob is about to achieve its greatest triumph: its final takeover of Britain”. Did anyone in Telegraph towers actually read Allister’s cri de cœur?
The Lockdown Files could soon claim their first scalp. Conservative MP and chairman of the Health Select Committee Steve Brine is facing calls to stand down from the role after the Telegraph revealed he had lobbied the government for cash during the pandemic. In February 2021, Brine approached Michael Gove and an adviser in the Department of Health to convince the NHS to hire anaesthetists from Remedium. A firm paying him £1,600 per month.
Brine claimed he had been “trying for months” to secure taxpayer cash for Remedium’s business. This could fall foul of two separate sets of rules – one which prohibits ex-ministers from using their contacts for two years after they leave government, and another which bans MPs from lobbying for any firm within six months of receiving a reward. This isn’t even Brine’s first lobbying charge. He was previously investigated for rule breaking after trying to convince Hancock to hire Remedium staff for Nightingale Hospitals. The only reason he was cleared was that he didn’t pay VAT…
In response, Brine has faced calls to resign his committee chairmanship from across the political divide – Stephen Dorrell, a former Health Minister under John Major, told Sky News Brine should “consider his position”. Guido thinks so too…
Ex-hacks and editorial staff at Telegraph towers are taking to the company employee review website Glassdoor to give the senior leadership team both barrels over its “toxic culture” and “bullying” management. In the past year alone, dozens of anonymous miserable employees have flocked to the website to leave one and two-star diatribes over Chris Evans’ notorious reign of terror. The sort of comments they tend to send to Guido’s inbox; at one point staff were offered a £2,000 bounty for every new starter they brought into the Telegraph family.
Since around this time last year, he’s a flavour of what fleeing staff have had to say about the company:
“Really poor senior management”
“The company doesn’t invest in journalism”
“In editorial it is the worst bullying workplace you could ever experience, people are traumatised, people have been hospitalised for stress”
“Toxic culture, systemic bullying, terrible communication, complete lack of vision”
“Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.”
Ten one-star reviews have been written in the last three months alone. In Evans’ defence, a few ex-hacks complain about the “long hours“, which would suggest they were just in the wrong line of work to begin with. Still, an average rating of 2.9 stars probably won’t help with that staff exodus…
