LONDON — Britain’s investment minister warned critics of a controversial attempt to sell the Daily Telegraph newspaper to a fund backed by the United Arab Emirates not to get “sentimental about some of our so-called treasured assets.”
Amid mounting calls for the government to intervene in the proposed acquisition of the 200-year-old Conservative Party staple on press freedom grounds, Dominic Johnson told POLITICO the U.K. needs to remain an “open economy.”
And he suggested he would not oppose the sale of a national newspaper to the UAE as long as the proper “judicial processes” are followed.
Lloyds Bank has agreed to a deal involving the effective takeover of the Telegraph and the Spectator — another favorite of grassroots Conservatives — by Redbird IMI, an investment vehicle controlled by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund.
The deal has sparked fierce resistance from some Conservative MPs concerned about the right-leaning newspaper’s editorial freedom. They point to the UAE’s poor domestic record on press freedom.
Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said last week that she was “minded” to intervene in the takeover by launching an official review by two watchdogs, but no final decision has been taken.
Johnson, who will welcome senior figures from the UAE and other Gulf states at Monday’s Global Investment Summit in London, said “the UAE is a first class and extremely well run country” and that he had “always been immensely impressed by the caliber of leadership there.”
“My view is that we remain an open economy and it’s very important we remain an open economy if we’re to have the wealth and investment to power this country,” he said.
“My formula is always to revert to ‘what is going to make this country richer and more prosperous and secure?’”
“We can be quite sentimental about some of our so-called treasured assets,” Johnson added. “The reality is that media and information has moved on and clearly most of us today don’t buy a physical newspaper or necessarily go to a traditional news source.”
Monday’s Global Investment Summit brings together chief executives of some of the largest financial firms on the planet, including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Blackstone.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and other ministers will spend the day trying to sell Britain as an investment destination to the private sector, while also trying to close multi-billion-pound investment deals with foreign countries.
“I want to use the investment summit to showcase the U.K. in terms of science and technology leadership, to do deals and use it as a fulcrum point to generate many millions of pounds worth of investment into the U.K. … and expose all my colleagues to the investment needs of the top 200 business people in the world,” Johnson said.
