The Fall of the House of Barclay

Twin towers of industry: Sir David Barclay and Sir Frederick Barclay receiving their knighthoods at Buckingham Palace in 2000. How did the former owners of the Ritz and The Telegraph go from billionaires to bankrupts? By Joseph Bullmore The $766 million sale of the storied British newspaper The Telegraph to the European media giant Axel Springer on Friday felt like the final nail in the coffin for the empire of the once mighty Barclay brothers. Although they had lost control of the paper three years earlier, its torturous sale process—riddled with endless legal, financial, and political maneuvering—neatly mirrored the long decline in the family’s fortunes.The beginning of the end can be traced to 2020, when the Barclay clan’s reclusive twin patriarchs—Sir David and Sir Frederick—were in the middle of an internecine fracas that involved the treacherous READ ON