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RedBird IMI boss Jeff Zucker said he regrets not completing the acquisition of the Spectator magazine last year before being dragged into a months-long UK government probe that ultimately blocked the deal.
RedBird IMI had agreed to acquire the Spectator as part of a proposed £600mn takeover of the wider Telegraph Media Group last year.
But Zucker on Thursday said the British weekly magazine could have been acquired separately to the deal for the Telegraph newspaper, which at the time was held up by a regulatory investigation.
The Spectator became a vocal opponent of its own takeover by RedBird IMI, which is backed by money from Abu Dhabi.
“We’ll move on, and we’ll do the next thing,” he said, reflecting on the UK government’s move to block his takeover of the Telegraph and Spectator. “But if I could go back in time, I probably would have done two things differently. On the Spectator, I think we would have closed on that deal. We had the ability to do so. We were just being good citizens.”
Talking at the WSJ CEO Council Summit in London, Zucker said that in hindsight he would also have structured the Telegraph deal to use less money from the Middle East.
IMI is controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a vice-president of the United Arab Emirates, although RedBird IMI is managed out of the US and had promised editorial independence for the newspaper group.
“We should have structured the deal differently and changed the percentage of ownership of each of the entities that was within RedBird,” he said. “I think it probably would have sufficed [to do the deal].”
The risk of a foreign state owning and influencing the Telegraph and the Spectator sparked widespread concern among UK politicians, who ultimately moved to change the law to block the deal by limiting state involvement in British newspaper companies.
RedBird IMI has now kicked off the auction to find new owners for the titles, Zucker confirmed, after permission was granted by ministers last week.
He said the level of interest from potential buyers was “robust”, adding “we’ve actually been a little surprised at the number of incoming calls that we’ve gotten”.
Zucker added: “It probably wouldn’t surprise people to know those who are interested in the UK, but I think the thing that has surprised us is those who have called us from outside the UK.”
Zucker said RedBird IMI would continue to look for new deals. The group is expected to complete the £1.1bn acquisition of British TV production company All3Media next week.
“On the entertainment side, we feel we have a nice suite of assets, we’ll continue to look for others that can give us quality programming. We’re also going to continue to look for opportunities in the news and information space.”
Zucker, a former CNN boss, said the group would consider looking at the network if it was ever put up for sale by its owner Warner Bros Discovery but that it was “not something that we’ve ever looked at in any formal way [or] in any manner . . . As far as I know, it’s not for sale”.
