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The business of football extends far beyond the pitch, and those involved in strategic investments often wear many hats across diverse industries.
RedBird Capital Partners, one of the world’s leading private equity firms, is entrenched in the club’s ownership structure through their partnership with Liverpool’s parent company, Fenway Sports Group (FSG).
The New York=-based firm entered Anfield’s orbit in March 2021, when the US-based investment firm acquired an 11% stake in Fenway Sports Group for approximately £533 million ($750 million).
This was a transformative moment for FSG, providing much-needed capital following the financial toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, and helped the Boston-based group to gain the financial firepower to proceed with the Anfield Road Stand redevelopment.
It was reported earlier this month that RedBird had lined up with US investment giant Apollo for a £500 million takeover of The Telegraph newspaper.
The newspaper has been on the market for over two years following Lloyds Banking Group’s decision to force the newspaper’s parent company into insolvency due to unpaid loans by the Barclay family, who previously owned the title.
However, now Bloomberg Business has now revealed that RedBird Capital has withdrawn its bid to purchase Telegraph Media Group due to mounting resistance from Telegraph staff.
The concerns centered on threats to editorial independence as well as the foreign ownership of such a historic publication.
“We remain fully confident that the Telegraph and its world-class team have a bright future ahead of them and we will work hard to help secure a solution which is in the best interests of employees and readers,” said a spokesperson of the newspaper.
Although Redbird founder Gerry Cardinale pledged to protect editorial standards and create “the global center right equivalent to the New York Times,” these commitments proved insufficient to overcome internal opposition.
The withdrawal announcement arrived on Friday, ending months of uncertainty for the historic newspaper and marking a rare retreat for an otherwise aggressive investment firm.
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