Having used his country’s vast wealth to transform the fortunes of Manchester City, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan is now trying to win ownership of The Daily Telegraph.
Abu Dhabi’s oil fortune led to Manchester City winning last season’s Champions League but there is growing concern at the prospect of a member of the Gulf state’s royal family controlling an influential national newspaper.
City’s on-pitch glory has come amid allegations of financial wrongdoing and cover-up, which are at odds with the values associated with a national newspaper known for its investigative reporting, including the scandal of MPs’ expenses. Critics also highlight Mansour’s ownership of other newspapers, which they claim does not bode well for the future of the distinguished British title, founded in 1855.
Mansour, 53, is the brother of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, 62, the ruler of Abu Dhabi.
Among Mansour’s many government and commercial roles he is vice-president of Abu Dhabi, vice-president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and vice-chairman of Abu Dhabi’s strategic investment company, Mubadala. The youngest of his two wives is Princess Manal bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, 46, a daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai.
The engaging sheikh is the public face of Abu Dhabi’s state investments, which are designed to provide economic security when its oil wells run dry and also to generate international prestige and influence.
Mansour signified Britain’s importance to the UAE when he met the King at Buckingham Palace on the eve of the Coronation in May. A newspaper he already owns reported that the sheikh highlighted “the crucial role played by the late Queen Elizabeth II in bolstering ties between the UAE and the UK and underlined the importance of enhancing relations between the nations”.
Since Mansour bought Manchester City in 2008 it has become one of the world’s most successful football clubs. It is now part of an international network of clubs owned by Abu Dhabi, which makes the country a powerful force in football.
Mansour seems personally uninterested in the success of City, despite it having won the Premier League seven times under his ownership. He visited the Etihad Stadium for the first time in 2010 to watch a 3-0 win over Liverpool and did not attend another match until his team won the Champions League final in Istanbul in June.
Under Mansour’s ownership City has been accused of breaching financial fair play rules designed to control spending by clubs. It is alleged to have secretly injected huge sums into the club under the cover of commercial sponsorship deals that were allegedly financed by various parts of the Abu Dhabi state, including the Emirates airline. The club denies wrongdoing.
In 2020 Uefa, football’s European governing body, found City guilty of “disguised funding” and failing to co-operate with investigators. The club’s two-year ban from the Champions League was overturned on appeal and a £26 million fine cut to £8.7 million.
Meanwhile, Premier League investigators complained that City refused to hand over documents. The dispute reached the Court of Appeal in London, where a senior judge dismissed City’s application to keep the case secret, saying: “This is a matter of the greatest public interest”. Daily Telegraph journalists have assiduously investigated the scandal.
City was charged in February with breaching 115 regulations over 14 seasons from 2009-10. The charges over financial reporting relate to nine seasons, from 2009-10 to 2017-18. The club is also charged with not co-operating with an investigation and failing to hand over documents from 2018-19 to 2022-23. City denies wrongdoing.
The bid for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspaper titles and The Spectator magazine is a joint venture between Mansour’s International Media Investments (IMI) and the US-based RedBird Capital. News Corp, the ultimate parent of The Times, is reported to be interested in The Spectator.
The bidders are reported to be preparing to offer a legally binding agreement to the government that IMI would be a “passive” partner, with a spokesman saying that independence of the titles was “essential to protecting their reputation and credibility”.
IMI’s other titles include The National, which was founded in Abu Dhabi in 2008. The National’s first editor was Martin Newland, who coincidentally was a former editor of The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper gained a reputation for fearless reporting in a region where the media is usually strictly controlled.
IMI bought the title in 2016. Former staff said this week that critical coverage became increasingly difficult and it seemed the government “wanted all the prestige that came with owning a high-class newspaper but none of the responsibility”.
IMI also owned the al-Roeya newspaper, which was based in Dubai. The title closed suddenly in September last year, with dozens of staff losing their jobs, after it published a report that Emiratis were struggling with higher fuel prices following the withdrawal of subsidies.
IMI claimed it was closed because it was being transformed into a new Arabic business outlet with CNN, but staff claimed it was a result of the article.
Cathryn Grothe, of the Washington-based group Freedom House, told the Associated Press news agency: “The UAE touts itself as liberal and open to business while continuing its repression. Censorship is rampant, online and offline … it limits the work that journalists are able to do.”
Mansour is reported to have a fortune of between £17 billion and £30 billion but as he is inextricably linked to the state, estimates are unreliable. He owns a vast palace in Abu Dhabi, a mansion in Spain and one of what is thought to be the world’s biggest superyachts, the 483ft A+ Yacht, formerly known as the Topaz. In 2009 he spent £170 million on a 32 per cent stake in Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceship company.
Mansour’s bid for the The Daily Telegraph came after it was put up for sale when the Barclay family lost control of the title in June because of £1.2 billion in overdue loans to Lloyds bank.
Mansour’s previous business dealing involving Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay centred on a battle for ownership of three leading London hotels: Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley.
Mansour and one of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds were involved in a series of financial deals to try to buy the hotels, including detailed negotiations with the Barclay brothers. Although Abu Dhabi bid £1.6 billion they were eventually bought by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.
While Mansour will be hoping for more luck this time, Daily Telegraph readers may want reassurances about the intentions of the title’s prospective new owner.
PM to meet chairman funding bid
With the government scrutinising the takeover bid, Rishi Sunak is expected to meet Dr Sultan Al Jaber, chairman of IMI, when he attends the Cop climate change conference next week.
The oil executive is also the UAE-appointed president of the Cop28 climate talks that begin in Dubai next week and which Sunak is due to attend on Friday.
Whitehall sources said that Sunak was unlikely to be able to avoid meeting Al Jaber without causing a diplomatic incident given his central role in the talks. However, Downing Street insisted there were no plans for the prime minister to have a bilateral meeting with Al Jaber and said that if they did meet he would not discuss the Telegraph deal.
Al Jaber’s dual role underlines the tightrope that ministers are walking as they attempt to foster close relations with — and inward investment from — the Gulf state while harbouring significant concerns about its potential ownership of the Telegraph.
Al Jaber is a key player in the UAE as both the chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and the country’s minister for industry.
But he is also an influential figure in the country’s media as chairman of IMI, whose investments also include Sky News Arabic and Euronews.
Between 2015 and 2020 Al Jaber was also head of the country’s National Media Council, during which time Amnesty International criticised him for “exercising strict control over local and international media”.
Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, has said that she is “minded to” issue a public interest intervention (PIIN) notice over the proposed takeover.
Some senior Conservatives have warned that the links to Abu Dhabi could pose a risk to the Telegraph’s editorial independence. But Jeff Zucker, the former CNN boss who as head of RedBird IMI is leading the bid, said he would “make sure” the government understood that “we’re prepared to make commitments that should assuage anyone’s concerns”.
Zucker promised to create an editorial advisory board that would uphold the independence of both the Telegraph and the Spectator magazine.
RedBird IMI is understood to have hired a lobbying firm, Flint Global, set up by Ed Richards, the former boss of the media regulator Ofcom, to support their bid. Flint Global recently employed Adam Atashzai, who returned to No 10 as a special adviser this year, having previously worked for David Cameron when he was prime minister.
If Frazer does issue a PIIN notice, Ofcom will carry out a public interest test on the deal.
In a letter to The Times today Duncan Jeffery, a former executive editor of an English-language daily circulating throughout the UAE and Pakistan in the 1980s, said he was concerned by the prospect of the takeover.
He said that during his time working for the Khaleej Times, its sister French-language edition published an agency report highlighting the employment conditions facing domestic staff in households throughout the Emirates. “The next day Dubai police arrived in force at our offices on the Abu Dhabi road and ordered the French edition to cease publication immediately and for ever,” he said.
Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator magazine and columnist at The Daily Telegraph, said he was unsure of what comes next.
Asked if he would like to be owned by Sheikh Mansour, he told the BBC: “It is so bizarre to hear the situation we find ourselves, in parcelled around by Lloyds bank. There’s so many various options for The Spectator and it’s depressing to see us in this auction situation but here we are.”
