Sir Paul Marshall has been confirmed as the new owner of influential political magazine The Spectator.
The hedge fund magnate bought the publication from Abu Dhabi-backed fund RedBird IMI for £100 million.
The 65-year-old multi-millionaire has snapped up the business, following a lengthy auction process, through his Old Queen Street Ventures company.
The Spectator, and sister publication art magazine Apollo, will be swallowed by the business which already runs online magazine UnHerd.
It represents a continued shift in the business interests of Sir Paul.
The financier, whose sister is ITV journalist Penny Marshall, was born in London in 1959.
He is currently recognised for supporting conservative-leaning causes but had a longstanding association with Liberal Democrats in his earlier years.
Sir Paul was a research assistant to former party leader Charles Kennedy in 1985 and stood for Parliament for the SDP-Liberal Alliance in Fulham two years later.
He later built a career in investment banking before launching his own investment firm Marshall Wace in 1997, with 50 million US dollars (£38 million), half of which came from Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
Marshall Wace has since become one of the UK’s most successful hedge funds, with a rapid expansion which has built it up to oversee more than 65 billion US dollars (£49.6 billion) in assets.
Sir Paul donated £200,000 to the Liberal Democrats between 2002 and 2015 as he built up his wealth but left the party in 2015 after disagreeing with the party’s position on the Brexit referendum.
He was a significant supporter of the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, providing a £100,000 donation to the Leave campaign in 2016.
Congratulations to Sir Paul Marshall, new owner of The Spectator. The price, £100m, is a huge vote of confidence in The Spectator, its writers and (most of all) its potential. After a long auction, the next chapter in our 196-year history can finally begin https://t.co/M7xkaEXKoy
— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) September 10, 2024
Later that year, he also shifted his support towards the Conservative Party. He handed a £3,250 donation to Michael Gove’s leadership campaign that year. He has since donated a further £500,000 to the party.
In 2016, he was knighted in the Birthday Honours for services to education and philanthropy.
This was partly linked to ARK (Absolute Return for Kids), the children’s charity he founded with Ian Wace, and has grown to include a 39-strong trust of academy schools.
Sir Paul’s philanthropic pursuits also saw him top the Sunday Times Giving List for 2024, donating over 16% of his £875 million wealth to a variety of causes.
Meanwhile, in 2017, Sir Paul started his investment into the media sector by providing the funding for news and comment platform UnHerd.
The business, as well as the UnHerd Club and Old Queen Street Cafe, will form Old Queen Street Ventures alongside the Spectator.
Under his stewardship, UnHerd, a digital rival for the Spectator, moved its headquarters to Old Queen Street, a few doors down from the competitor.
The Times reported this resulted in the “chagrin of some at the magazine”, with former Spectator chairman Andrew Neil reportedly blocking his entrance to The Spectator’s summer garden party the following year.
Sir Paul is also the co-owner of GB News, helping to fund the launch of the broadcaster in 2021.
He later became interim chairman after Mr Neil, the TV station’s founding chairman and presenter, resigned months after launch following apparent tensions between the two.
It is understood that Sir Paul is still among the remaining bidders seeking to buy The Telegraph Media Group (TMG) in a deal which would cement his role as a media mogul even further.
His family are also no strangers to the UK’s entertainment and media landscape, with his son Winston Marshall gaining fame as the banjo player and lead guitarist in folk band Mumford & Sons.
In 2021, Winston Marshall left the Grammy-winning band after facing criticism for hailing a book by conservative American social media personality Andy Ngo, saying his departure would allow him to exercise his free speech.
Since 2022, the musician has presented a podcast, Marshall Matters, for the Spectator, discussing free speech and the arts.
