Daily Mail owner DMGT teams up with Moore Capital to invest in energy transition firms

Newspaper owner Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) is joining forces with New York money manager Moore Capital Management to launch a new venture fund to invest in energy transition companies. 

The venture fund, Renown Capital Partners, will invest in early and growth stage private companies working on the global energy transition.

Moore Capital is providing $200 million worth of capital while DMGT, which also owns publications including the Metro, New Scientist, and the i, will invest an undisclosed sum. 

The fund will be led by Moore exec James McIntyre, who will bring over a team of investors from the New York money manager — including Hunter Horgan and Cameron Scari — which was founded by U.S. hedge fund billionaire Louis Bacon in 1989. 

In a statement, DMGT and Moore said the new fund will seek to “draw on the reach of DMGT’s media assets” and also leverage the publisher’s UAE-based events business, which runs major oil and gas industry conferences, including Gastech, EGYPS and ADIPEC. 

In November, DMGT’s events business won a £545,000 government contract to run the U.K.’s events at the COP28 climate conference in the UAE, government records show.   

The newspaper publisher, which was founded in 1905, also runs its own venture capital fund, which invests in companies including online estate agents Zoopla and online car seller Cazoo. 

In January 2022, DMGT delisted from the London Stock Exchange in a deal that saw Lord Rothermere, the heir to the Daily Mail empire, take the firm private for £871 million. 

The London media company generated revenues worth £997 million in the full-year ending on Sept. 30, including £625 million from its publishing business.  

DMGT last month ended talks with Qatari investors over plans to buy The Telegraph broadsheet newspaper due to concerns the U.K. government would seek to block Middle East backed bids, the Financial Times reported.