How incredible, how depressing, that
Richard Desmond might buy the Telegraph
STEPHEN GLOVER
most people arc assuming that Conrad Black will lose control of the Daily Telegraph. the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator. He has been forced to resign as chief executive officer of the New York listed company Hollinger International, which owns these titles in addition to the Jerusalem Post and Chicago SunTimes. Lord Black and fellow executives face probable investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the American financial regulator. Hollinger has admitted that a total of $32.15 million in so-called 'non-competition payments' was made to Lord Black and senior colleagues without the authorisation of the audit committee or the full board. Lord Black has personally agreed to pay back more than $7 million to shareholders. Other payments made to Lord Black and his associates will now come under scrutiny.
It is possible that Lord Black will somehow hang on to the Telegraph Group, of which he remains chairman for the time being, but even his friends do not think this is very likely. Though he remains the controlling shareholder in Hollinger International, his shares are effectively frozen. Hollinger has instructed Lazards to look at a possible break-up and sale. Lord Black was the moving spirit of Hollinger and its raison d'être, and if he is off the playing field, the company would seem to make little sense without him. He appears to have been undone by two factors: the worldwide advertising recession and the new passion in America for corporate governance. Tweedy Browne, which owns 18 per cent of Hollinger International, has led the campaign against Lord Black. On Monday it called Hollinger's board 'a disgrace'.
I am certainly not going to join those who are dancing on what they think is Lord Black's grave. He has been a good proprietor. In 1986 he rescued the Telegraph titles from bankruptcy. Despite the price war and the advertising recession, they are financially in good shape, with the Telegraph Group making £39.7 million last year. This explains why so many companies are queuing up in the hope that they may be able to buy it. The Spectator, which Lord Black acquired in 1988, has more than doubled its circulation under his watch, and for the first time in its history has become handsomely profitable. Lord Black has generally given his editors a remarkably free rein and, when he disagrees with them, is more likely than not to say so in the letters column. He is more intellectually sophisticated than any other proprietor one can think of, and than nearly all of his critics. In the midst of this crisis he is publishing what sounds like a formidable biography of FDR. Most press barons can barely write a newspaper article.
Those who are rejoicing at Lord Black's tribulations should consider this question: who is the most likely new owner of the Telegraph Group? The queue I mentioned is a long one. There are the venture capital boys — Apax, Candover, 3i, and so forth. The name of Michael Green, the outgoing chairman of Carlton Television, has been whispered. One wonders how many of these suitors have the £500 or £600 million which would be the likely cost of the Telegraph Group. An American buy-out specialist called Nelson Peitz is already studying the company's books. In the end an existing publisher is more likely than not to emerge as the eventual owner because it can probably pay more than the non-publisher. Think of the financial advantages if you are already a large buyer of newsprint and have a publishing infrastructure. There may well be foreign newspaper companies already circling the Telegraph Group. but they are as yet difficult to identify. Of home-grown newspaper groups there are really only two plausible suitors: DMGT, publisher of the Daily Mail and the London Evening Standard: and Richard Desmond's Express Newspapers.
As I write a column for the Daily Mail I will not sing the praises of DMGT, save to say that it is a highly professional company which always invests in journalism. I imagine it has been stalking the Telegraph Group for some time. It could raise the money, though with existing debts of about £900 million it is relatively hard-pressed, though highly profitable. As a large national newspaper publisher, it would certainly face a referral to the Competition Commission. Under new rules Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, can also ask Ofcom, the new communications regulatory body, to look at the effect any deal would have on the plurality and diversity of views in British society. What would be represented as an even-handed and disinterested process would, of course, be highly political. DMGT does not have very many friends in government.
The pornographer Richard Desmond does. Tony Blair is fond of him. Mr Desmond claims that he has £1 billion of loans lined up. He has little or no debt, Express Newspapers also co-owns Westferry Printers with the Telegraph Group, whose share Mr Desmond has the right to buy if the company is sold. (But could he afford to deny printing facilities to a new owner of the Telegraph Group if that meant presses at Westferry lying idle?) Mr Desmond would also be referred to the Competition Commission, though he would argue that a bid by him presented fewer competition issues than one by DMGT since the circulation of the Daily Express is less than half that of the Daily Mail, and his paper is more downmarket, and thus less of a competitor to the Daily Telegraph.
The Telegraph is the first paper I worked for. It is close to my heart, as is The Spectator. How incredible it is, and how depressing, that these great titles could be owned by a man such as Richard Desmond. What has happened to our country? He is not a soft-porn pornographer, as the BBC and others describe him, but the owner of television channels and magazines which by my definition are hard-core. Readers may remember his disgusting advertisement for 'Anal Annie'. And yet almost no one seems to care any more. Our society is so debased, so lacking in moral standards, that a man who has made his fortune out of pornography can be weighed up as a future owner of the Daily Telegraph. The person who has done most to make Richard Desmond respectable is, of course, that practising Christian Tony Blair, who allowed the pornographer to buy the Express titles, invited him to No. 10 and then to Chequers, and all in return for the support of Mr Desmond's newspapers. Well, I would not write for him, and I am sure many others would not. I should far rather become a busker at Leicester Square Underground station. My cry to politicians and journalists of Right and Left, to those who love the Daily Telegraph and to all decent Britons is: STOP DESIVIOND.
rrhe historian Andrew Roberts (whom I I know slightly) has been done over by the Mail on Sunday as a result of his recent outspoken support for Prince Charles over the allegations that cannot be spoken. I do not share Mr Roberts's views on this matter. Nor do I know whether his private life has been as diverting as the MoS suggests. But when a writer by the name of Fidelma Cook implies that he is not even a very good historian, the paper has gone too far.
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