Black gold
Sir: In your introduction to Nicholas Gar- land's admirable 'Journal of the difficult birth of the Independent' (3 October), you state that in December 1985 Mr Conrad Black bought the Telegraph from Lord Hartwell. Since the war every single national newspaper has been bought out (some- times twice) except the Guardian, the Mail — and the Telegraph, where the majority owners (my family) ran out of cash to finance a £100 million redevelopment scheme. We now own 20 per cent (as opposed to 57 per cent) of the equity, a loan of £3.8 million to the company, and are entitled to four seats on the board.
The sequence of transactions is too complicated to be described here excepting the crisis of October 1985. One night at 7.00 p.m. our 'supporting' banks said they would put the company into liquidation if I did not put up a final tranche of the loan referred to above by 3.00 p.m. the next day.
Six weeks later Mr Black put the neces- sary millions into the company to restore it to an even keel. Naturally he would not do so without gaining control.
Hartwell
Telegraph Newspaper Trust, 36 Broadway, London SW1
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