US investment firm RedBird pulls out of buying Britain’s Telegraph newspaper

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LONDON (AP) — U.S. investment firm RedBird Capital said Friday that it has dropped its offer to buy the publisher of Britain’s 170-year-old conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper for about 500 million pounds ($660 million).

RedBird, which was leading a consortium for the purchase, said in May that it had reached an in-principle agreement to become the controlling owner of the Telegraph Media Group.

“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," RedBird said in a statement Friday.

The Telegraph group publishes the daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers, both of which are closely allied to Britain’s Conservative Party.

The group sold The Spectator, one of the world’s oldest political magazines, last year for 100 million pounds to hedge fund investor Paul Marshall. He is the co-owner of U.K. channel GB News, which launched four years ago as a right-leaning, Fox News-style alternative to mainstream news channels.