Jeff Zucker’s re-entry into the global news business has hit a snag.
The British government said on Thursday that it would open a review of a pending deal to put Mr. Zucker, the former president of CNN, in control of The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, a pair of London’s most prestigious publications.
The announcement capped a week of growing outcry in Westminster over Mr. Zucker’s use of roughly $1 billion in Emirati money to acquire the news organizations, which are hugely influential in British conservative politics. Tories lined up to denounce the proposed deal, warning that the Emiratis’ involvement could lead to undue foreign influence over The Telegraph’s coverage.
The review, announced by Britain’s culture secretary, does not necessarily end Mr. Zucker’s chance of success. But it could delay the deal by several months and allow time for rival bidders, including moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothermere, owner of The Daily Mail, to build public opposition to the sale.
Mr. Murdoch and others were taken aback last week when Mr. Zucker emerged as the unlikely leading candidate to secure control of The Telegraph, which went up for sale this year after its longtime British owners defaulted on a loan. Since then, Conservative Party eminences have lined up to denounce his bid — often in essays published by newspapers controlled by Mr. Zucker’s rivals — and Tory members of Parliament urged regulators to consider the constraints on press freedoms in the Middle East.
Mr. Zucker flew to London this week to argue his case, pledging that he would preserve the editorial independence of The Telegraph’s newsroom and insisting that his financial partner, the Emirati royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, was a passive investor who would have no say in editorial matters. “I would resign” over any suggestion of Emirati influence, Mr. Zucker told The Telegraph in an interview.
The government’s review of the deal is expected to conclude by late January. The culture secretary said the review would encompass questions about “the need for accurate presentation of news and free expression of opinion in newspapers.”
Representatives for Mr. Zucker did not immediately comment on Thursday, but his team had been anticipating a government intervention.
Critics of the deal have invoked longstanding sensitivities in Britain over foreign control of local institutions. Sheikh Mansour is well-known in Britain as the owner of Manchester City, the Premier League football club, where his lavish spending yielded numerous championships and, more recently, a scandal over potential violations of the league’s financial fair play rules. (Manchester City has rejected claims of misdeeds.)
Britain’s clubby media world also has a tradition of hostility to outsiders. Mr. Murdoch’s purchase of The Times of London in 1981 was denounced as a hijacking by an upstart Australian, and Mr. Murdoch had to make pledges of editorial independence for the sale to go through.
The vessel for Mr. Zucker’s bid is RedBird IMI, the media venture company he founded last year as a joint venture between RedBird Capital, an American private equity firm, and International Media Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based investment fund. In a maneuver that caught rivals off-guard, RedBird IMI said it would directly pay off the debt of The Telegraph’s owners, which short-circuited an open auction for the publications that was already underway.
If Mr. Zucker’s effort is ultimately blocked by regulators, the auction would resume, allowing his competitors a second chance to secure control.
Mr. Zucker, 58, was forced out of CNN last year after he failed to disclose a relationship with a colleague. A highly visible media figure for decades, Mr. Zucker became a political lightning rod because of his complex history with former President Donald J. Trump. In 2003, as president of NBC, he greenlighted Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” turning the real estate developer into a national sensation. At CNN, Mr. Zucker aired hours of unfiltered coverage of Mr. Trump’s early campaign rallies; after Mr. Trump became president, CNN was attacked by conservatives for what they deemed an anti-Trump bias.
Britons who were unfamiliar with Mr. Zucker’s track record have received a crash course this week in the pages of London newspapers, which have chronicled every twist of The Telegraph saga with their signature irreverence. The Telegraph’s own lengthy interview noted Mr. Zucker’s attitude of “rank impertinence,” and the paper illustrated the article with a giant photograph of Mr. Zucker grinning next to Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, taken during his NBC days.
If The Telegraph deal closes, Mr. Zucker, who is based in Manhattan and relishes being a part of the news business, said he was unlikely to handle day-to-day editorial matters. But he would oversee The Telegraph’s financial strategy, including a possible expansion into the United States, where Mr. Zucker said he sees a market “for a true center-right media outlet.”
“If you have a brand that has the journalistic integrity of The Telegraph and the energy that U.K. outlets have, that really is missing in the States, I think it’s a good combination,” he told The Telegraph.