NO PRIZES for guessing the City's happiest banker of the week: step forward, Charlie Nunn.

I can only imagine the scene at Lloyds Banking Group's headquarters on Monday lunchtime when confirmation arrived that a £1.2bn loan to the Barclay family, made more than 15 years ago and long since written down, had finally been repaid in full. Nunn and his colleagues must have felt like they'd won the biggest Lottery rollover in history.

Their reward demonstrates the benefit of a hardball negotiating position;

Lloyds rejected a handful of lower offers before Barclays eventually offered to repay the bank in full.

That tough stance will result in a £500m-plus windfall for Lloyds' shareholders come its annual results in the first quarter; Nunn and his board will deserve credit for that amid a wider growth plan which looks challenging.

Nevertheless, what's good for the bank is not necessarily good for the Telegraph itself. The interregnum, in which the Barclays have temporary ownership but not control, is an uneasy one, while the growing revolt amongst the newspaper's senior writers, past and present, betrays an understandable anxiety about the prospect of foreign state ownership.

Their voices may prove to be influential in a quasi-judicial process run on a tight timetable, and with Ofcom under pressure to demonstrate robust scrutiny of the editorial independence issues raised by Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, in her public interest intervention notice last week.

RedBird IMI is adamant that its assurances of editorial independence, along with a legally binding guarantee, should provide sufficient comfort to the government. The response of readers polled on the issue suggests the bidder will need to go further.

A restructured deal reducing the proportion of Abu Dhabi equity in the takeover vehicle to substantially below 50 per cent would be a neat compromise for Ofcom. Whether it would be acceptable to RedBird IMI and its investors is another question. But I suspect that a remedy like that one will ultimately be required if Frazer is to wave through the acquisition of a politically sensitive media asset in a general election year.

(c) 2023 City A.M., source Newspaper