Dovid Efune is frontrunner at deadline to buy Telegraph titles

The fate of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph will move a step closer to being resolved today when suitors for the newspapers face a deadline to submit second-round bids for the titles.
Dovid Efune, the British-born owner of The New York Sun, is thought to be the frontrunner to clinch a deal for the Telegraph, which has faced an uncertain future for more than a year.
Also having expressed an interest, however, is the British hedge fund tycoon Paul Marshall, who has backed GB News and also this month struck a £100 million deal for The Spectator, the Telegraph’s former stablemate.
National World, which is chaired by the newspaper veteran David Montgomery and owns titles including The Yorkshire Post, the Sunderland Echo and The Scotsman, is another suitor.
A deal will shake up the media landscape of Britain. The Telegraph had been owned by the Barclay family since 2004, when they acquired the daily and Sunday papers and The Spectator from Conrad Black’s Hollinger publishing business for £665 million.
They lost grip on their papers and the magazine in June last year, however, when Lloyds Banking Group took control of the titles after the Barclays failed to repay £1.15 billion of debts.
The Telegraph has been in limbo since then. The Abu Dhabi-backed RedBird IMI in effect took control of the papers in December when it helped the Barclay family to repay their debts to Lloyds but the government blocked it from making any significant changes to the titles while the takeover was being investigated.
Concerns about UAE influence on a national paper meant that the deal faced a growing backlash from politicians and the media. This prompted the government in March to set out plans to block foreign ownership of papers, prompting Redbird IMI to put the Telegraph titles and The Spectator up for sale the following month.
Since agreeing a deal to acquire the Spectator less than three weeks ago, Marshall, 65, has already moved to shake up the magazine by appointing the former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove as its editor, replacing Fraser Nelson. Charles Moore, a former editor of the Telegraph and The Spectator, has also been made the magazine’s new chair, succeeding Andrew Neil.
Marshall’s tilt for the Telegraph is backed by Ken Griffin, the American billionaire behind the US hedge fund giant Citadel.
Marshall is thought to face stiff competition, though, from Efune, 39, who only emerged as a suitor for the Telegraph this month.
Efune took control of the conservative-leaning New York Sun in 2021 and is now seen as the most likely candidate to take ownership of the Telegraph. He was previously the editor of The Algemeiner Journal, a New York-based paper that focuses on covering the Middle East, Israel and areas of Jewish interest.
Other parties that have been linked with the Telegraph include Nadhim Zahawi, the former chancellor who, like Gove, stepped down as an MP at the general election in July. Zahawi is said to have been trying to raise financing for a bid for the titles.
The private equity firm CVC had also been interested in the papers but walked away in July, as did DMGT, the Daily Mail owner, which is run by Lord Rothermere.