David Montgomery, the former Mirror newspapers chief, is putting the finishing touches to a line-up of City advisers that he hopes will help him outgun rivals in an auction of The Daily Telegraph.
Sky News has learnt that National World, Mr Montgomery’s London-listed vehicle, is close to appointing Cavendish Capital Markets and Peel Hunt to help raise the financing to buy the broadsheet newspaper and its Sunday sister title.
The two firms will work alongside Rothschild, which is providing corporate finance advice to Mr Montgomery, and Dowgate Securities, its existing broker.
The appointments underline Mr Montgomery’s determination to be a serious contender in an auction which is already generating significant interest from investors in the Middle East and the US.
National World, the latest quoted media vehicle established by the veteran executive, acknowledged last month that it would “consider participating in a sale process for Telegraph Media Group as and when such a process formally commences”.
It is not thought to be interested in acquiring The Spectator magazine, which is also being sold by Lloyds Banking Group, the orchestrator of the auction.
A spokesman for National World declined to comment on the impending appointment of City advisers.
Mr Montgomery’s company owns hundreds of regional titles, but not the asset he most covets – a national daily newspaper.
If he succeeds in raising the capital he needs to submit an offer, he will be up against formidable opposition.
Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail proprietor, is also piecing together a bid, with Gulf-based investors in talks to finance it.
Last week, Sky News revealed that Paul Zwillenberg, a former chief executive of the Daily Mail’s publisher, was being lined up to advise Sir Paul Marshall, the hedge fund tycoon, on a rival takeover proposal.
Ken Griffin, the Citadel hedge fund billionaire, is also expected to aid Sir Paul’s offer, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Sir Paul, who is also a big shareholder in the right-wing television news service GB News, is understood to be serious about his interest in owning the newspapers.
The Telegraph titles and The Spectator have been put up for sale after Lloyds seized control of them from the Barclay family, their long-standing owners.
Sky News revealed last month that the Barclay family was trying to line up hundreds of millions of pounds from Middle Eastern investors in a bid to wrest back control of the newspapers from Lloyds.
The family has lodged a series of proposals to buy back roughly £1bn of debt it owes Lloyds Banking Group.
A formal sale process, run by the Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs, is likely to kick off next month.
Until June, the newspapers were chaired by Aidan Barclay – the nephew of Sir Frederick Barclay, the octogenarian who along with late brother Sir David engineered the takeover of the Telegraph 19 years ago.
A sale for £600m, or anywhere close to it, would trigger a substantial writeback for Lloyds, which wrote down the value of its loans to the Barclays several years ago.
Nevertheless, a deal financed entirely by overseas investors could trigger other concerns relating to media ownership, particularly with the traditionally Conservative-supporting Telegraph titles being sold in the year before a general election.
In July, Telegraph Media Group (TMG) published full-year results showing pre-tax profits had risen by a third to about £39m in 2022.
A successful digital subscriptions strategy and “continued strong cost management” were cited as reasons for the company’s earnings growth.
“Our vision is to reach more paying readers than at any other time in our history, and we are firmly on track to achieve our 1 million subscriptions target in 2023 ahead of our year-end target,” said Nick Hugh, TMG chief executive..
The sale will be overseen by a new crop of directors led by Mike McTighe, the boardroom veteran who chairs Openreach and IG Group, the financial trading firm.
Mr McTighe has been appointed chairman of Press Acquisitions and May Corporation, the respective parent companies of TMG and The Spectator (1828), which publish the media titles.