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U.K. Hedge Fund Tycoon Buys The Spectator Magazine
Paul Marshall, a multimillionaire founder and investor in upstart conservative media outlets, has bought the right-wing magazine in a deal worth more than $131 million.
The Spectator, a 196-year-old magazine with a prominent place in British political life and longstanding ties to the Conservative Party, was on Tuesday sold to a hedge fund tycoon whose media interests also include a right-wing TV channel that has antagonized the country’s broadcasting regulator.
In a deal worth 100 million pounds, or $131 million, Paul Marshall, a press-shy multimillionaire who made his fortune through the hedge fund he co-founded, Marshall Wace, took control of The Spectator.
In recent years Mr. Marshall has reshaped himself as a media baron. He founded Unherd, a news and opinion website, and became a leading investor in the news channel GB News, which began broadcasting in 2021 and has emerged as a platform for hard-right political figures like Nigel Farage, who has his own prime-time talk show.
For more than three decades, The Spectator, which describes itself as “the oldest continuously published weekly in the English language,” was owned by the same publishing group as The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, two influential Conservative-leaning newspapers.
The Telegraph Media Group was owned by the Barclay family until last year, when RedBird IMI, a consortium backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the vice president of the United Arab Emirates, and the American investment firm RedBird Capital, led by the American media executive Jeff Zucker, assumed control of the debt-laden company.
RedBird IMI, which took over the Barclay family’s debts, tried to complete its acquisition of The Telegraph group and The Spectator but was thwarted by British regulators because of antitrust and media freedom concerns.
