Nearly a third of Scotland’s most-read national newspapers are owned in a US tax haven – and that proportion may soon rise to half, The Ferret can reveal.
As part of our Who Runs Scotland series, The Ferret analysed the ownership of the 21 national newspapers that adults in Scotland say they read – both in print and online – according to media regulator Ofcom’s 2024 news survey.
We found that six titles are owned by companies incorporated in Delaware, US, where it is easy to set up corporate entities without disclosing the true owners.
The publishers behind four papers more are the target of a takeover bid involving an investment firm based in the tax haven state.
Not one of the seven companies that own the most-read Scottish titles are incorporated in Scotland.
Other than the six newspapers incorporated in Delaware, three are owned in Jersey, and 10 are owned in England, while the ownership of two more are in limbo. Media reform campaigners said Holyrood and Westminster must do more to prevent concentrated media ownership.
Tax campaigners claimed the Delaware-ownership of Scottish media created a risk of “tax abuse”, and that secrecy provisions in the US state could allow anonymous owners to “subvert domestic politics” via their newspapers’ content.
Who owns Scotland’s papers?
Reach PLC publishes the most Scottish nationals – the Daily Record, Sunday Mail, Daily Star of Scotland, Scottish Daily Express and Scottish Sunday Express, as well as The Mirror and online publications including Glasgow Live and Edinburgh Live.
The London-based firm is chaired by Nicholas Prettejohn, who also chairs TSB Banking Group, and is an independent director of the polling firm, YouGov. Jim Mullen, Reach’s chief executive, held senior roles at gambling firms and News International – which is now called News UK.
The London-based News UK publishes the Scottish Sun, Scottish Sun on Sunday, and the Scotland editions of The Times and Sunday Times. Chief executive Rebekah Brooks once edited The Sun, and the News of World tabloid, which ceased publication following a phone hacking scandal.
News UK’s parent, News Corp, which is incorporated in Delaware, is owned by the family of billionaire media baron, Rupert Murdoch, and chaired by his son, Lachlan.
Also incorporated in Delaware is Gannett, which owns The Herald, Herald on Sunday, The National and the Sunday National, plus the Scottish Farmer and more than 20 Scottish locals including the Glasgow Times.
Its titles are published by Newsquest Media Group, which is headquartered in London and has a registered office in Newport, Wales.
Ownership of The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph – both of which have Scotland editions – is in a state of limbo. The billionaire Barclay family agreed to pass ownership to a fund bankrolled by the United Arab Emirates’ royal family after it paid off their debts.
But after the UK Government intervened to block ownership by a foreign state, the fund withdrew its bid.
A free and healthy democracy depends on a free and independent media.
A spokesperson for the Media Reform Coalition
In March, US businessman, Todd Boehly, and Northern Irish media mogul, David Montgomery, made a joint bid to buy the Telegraph titles and the Leeds-based National World, which owns The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and 19 Scottish locals including Edinburgh Evening News.
Boehly is acting via a media arm of his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, which is incorporated in Delaware. If his bid is successful, 50 per cent of Scotland’s most-read newspapers would be at least partly owned in the US tax haven state.
Billionaire Lord Rothermere, another press baron, is a controller and executive director of the London-based Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT). It owns the Scottish Daily Mail, Scottish Mail on Sunday and the Scottish editions of the Metro and the i Paper, via its DMG Media subsidiary.
Rothermere owns DMGT via the Jersey-registered Rothermere Continuation Limited, a company controlled via a trust “held for the benefit of Viscount Rothermere and his immediate family”, according to DMGT’s latest accounts.
The Guardian and The Observer do not have dedicated Scottish print editions, but are widely available in Scotland. The Guardian’s publisher, Guardian Media Group (GMG), and its owner, The Scott Trust Limited, are both London-based.
Named after The Guardian’s original editor and owner CP Scott, the trust does not have an ultimate controlling party. Its chair is the Norway-based Ole Jacob Sunde, the founder and chair of a Nordic wealth management firm.
As of 22 April, The Observer’s new owner is the London-based Tortoise Media Limited. The news platform does not have a controlling party but James Harding, its co-founder and editor, is the biggest shareholder. Harding is a former editor of The Times and director of BBC news.
Fellow co-founder and chair of Tortoise is Matthew Barzun, who was US ambassador to the UK, and a fundraiser for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.
Other titles
Other titles that are widely available in Scotland, but did not feature in the results of the news consumption survey, include The Sunday Post – the only national paper owned in Scotland.
It is published by the Dundee-headquartered DC Thomson, alongside regional papers The Courier, Dundee Evening Telegraph, the Press and Journal and the Aberdeen Evening Express.
According to its website, DC Thomson remains a “family-owned business” and its directors are all descendants of original founder, William Thomson. The publishing firm’s accounts show there is no individual controlling party.
The Independent and The Independent on Sunday – online-only since 2016 – belong to the London-registered Independent Digital News and Media. Its biggest controlling shareholders include Russian-born billionaire and son of former KGB agent, Lord Evgeny Lebedev.
Lebedev was elevated to the House of Lords after being nominated by his friend and then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, in 2020. The other major controllers are media mogul Justin Byam Shaw, and Saudi Arabian investor, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel.
A UK Government legal representative told a court that Abuljadayel’s purchase of his stake from Lebedev via a Cayman Islands firm was “unconventional, complex and clandestine”.
The Financial Times is owned by the Tokyo-based Japanese media giant, Nikkei Inc, while the socialist Morning Star is owned by the People’s Press Printing Society, a London-based reader’s cooperative and registered society.
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TV, radio and online
The publicly-owned BBC Scotland, headquartered in Glasgow, has several TV channels, radio stations and an online news service. Director Hayley Valentine was launch editor of BBC Scotland’s ill-fated The Nine, head of the BBC radio newsroom, and executive producer of Question Time.
STV is also based in Glasgow with news broadcast via its TV channel. It is largely owned by investment firms, with London’s Slater Investments holding the biggest stake – 19 per cent.
Group chair Paul Reynolds worked for BT and other telecoms firms. Chief executive, Rufus Radcliffe, held senior roles at ITV south of the border, and worked at Channel 4.
Channel 4 has a creative hub in Glasgow and the publicly-owned channel’s board is appointed by media regulator, Ofcom, in agreement with the UK Government media secretary.
Sky News is also a notable news source for Scots. It is owned by Comcast Corporation, which is headquartered in Pennsylvania, US.
Scots media ownership ‘a genuine worry’
The north eastern US state of Delaware is the second smallest after Rhode Island. It has long been the adopted home of Joe Biden, who represented the state in the US senate for 36 years before standing down to become vice president, and later president.
But Delaware is also known as a tax haven, with more registered businesses than residents.
The state, according to former Financial Times journalist and author of What’s the Matter with Delaware?, Hal Weitzman, allows for tax dodging, and syphons the earnings of some of the poorest people in society.
Alex Cobham, chief executive of the Tax Justice Network, said the state is “a major provider of anonymous and opaque company registration” and called it “a genuine worry that between a third and a half of the press in Scotland is or will be Delaware-owned.”
He claimed tax haven ownership of media organisations can obscure the controlling interests of a company, “offering scope for tax abuse”, and “may be genuinely hostile to national interests, and seek to subvert domestic politics for its own ends”.
Calls for media ownership reform
Cobham and others called on the Scottish and UK Governments to reform the media by preventing concentrated ownership, and enforcing greater transparency measures.
“Holyrood should consider a sensible minimum standard for regulation that would include requirements to publish full beneficial ownership information, and full annual accounts for the whole business structure behind each Scottish press outlet,” said Cobham.
A spokesperson for the Media Reform Coalition said: “A free and healthy democracy depends on a free and independent media. But for decades the UK has been in a severe crisis of concentrated media ownership, and this new research shows that Scotland’s media faces the same dangerous challenges.”
The coalition called on the UK Government to “create a proactive, future-proof framework for protecting and promoting media plurality, with clear market caps on media ownership, power to impose public interest obligations on the largest media companies, and stronger independent media regulation to ensure high standards”.
Jonathan Heawood, executive director of the Public Interest News Foundation, said: “The media play a vital role in democracy, so it’s problematic when the owners of the media aren’t accountable to citizens and residents in the country where they operate.
“Our research shows that people are more likely to trust local media that is locally owned, so offshore ownership is hardly likely to inspire loyalty among audiences.”
Julian Calvert, a journalism lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said most papers covering Scotland have “been in decline for 30 years” and that “ownership by large groups focussed on hitting short-term profits has certainly been a factor.”
The owners of all named publishing firms and individuals linked to tax havens were approached for comment. Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel could not be reached.
Update: At 14:57 on 24 April, we corrected a claim in this this article that 13 of Scotland’s most-read newspapers are owned in England. In fact, three of these titles are owned in Jersey, with the other 10 owned south of the border. We also updated a chart to reflect these amendments.
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