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This article is co-published with Carole Cadwalladr’s newsletter on Substack
On a chilly December morning two weeks ago, at a location deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside in the grounds of one of Britain’s most spectacular stately homes, cars began to arrive carrying some of the most powerful players in global energy.
Guests stepped out into a courtyard that boasts an Anish Kapoor sculpture and a stunning reflecting pool overlooking the Vale of Aylesbury and entered a stunning converted dairy firm transformed into a discreetly luxurious art and events space in the grounds of Waddesdon Manor.
Waiters circulated with breakfast snacks prepared by a Michelin-starred chef as the hosts, James Harding, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Tortoise Media; and Patrick Handley of the Brunswick Group, a City PR film – the current clients of which include Saudi Arabia’s Aramco – welcomed guests from around the world.
The annual event is a jewel in Tortoise Media’s crown, held in partnership with Brunswick and the Rothschild Foundation, set up by Harding’s friend and mentor, the legendary financier Jacob Rothschild, the 4th Baron Rothschild, whose family seat is Waddesdon Manor, and still managed by the family.
Harding, a former Editor of The Times and Director of BBC News, had other matters on his mind that day too. Because 5 December was also the second day of a historic strike by Guardian and Observer journalists – the first in half a century. They had overwhelmingly voted to do so in protest against the ‘sale’ of the Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper and a core part of the Guardian’s news organisation, to Harding’s Tortoise Media.
Although it was a freezing December morning out on the picket line, spirits were high. Journalists didn’t yet know that, later that day at an emergency meeting of the Scott Trust, the private company that owns the historically progressive and liberal Guardian and Observer, would agree to the deal, even as they were still on strike.
Nor did they know – until now – that, as they stood on the picket line, Harding was greeting members of Tortoise’s energy ‘advisory board’, including a name all too familiar to those who track the geopolitics of global energy: Bob Dudley, the former Chief Executive of BP who is best known in the US for overseeing the clean-up of the disastrous Gulf of Mexico spill and cheerleading for Donald Trump. Last month, he toured TV studios to tell viewers how a win for Trump was a win for US energy and business interests.
But Kremlin observers know Dudley too: he led BP’s tumultuous joint venture with Russian oil company, TNK; and subsequently took a seat on the board of Rosneft, a Russian oil company chaired by one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, Igor Sechin.
In fact, Dudley was on Rosneft’s board when the company joined Roman Abramovich in a lawsuit against investigative journalist Catherine Belton that 18 press freedom organisations described as a ‘SLAPP’ (a Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation), designed to chill Belton and other journalists’ reporting.
Belton’s case became a cause célèbre and added to public and political pressure to reform the law. Dudley, in contrast, made no public comment and resigned his position only after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But Dudley didn’t just sit on Rosneft’s board at that time. He sat on – and still sits on – a Tortoise Media energy ‘advisory board’.
Harding – who spoke at this year’s ‘Truth Tellers’ conference dedicated to investigative journalism convened by Tina Brown in memory of her husband, the legendary Sunday Times Editor, Sir Harry Evans – declined to comment on Dudley’s association with a news organisation.
Dudley had been part of the group that had brought this event together, shaping its contents and even, in 2022, just months after he had finally stepped down from Rosneft’s board, putting his name to the invite alongside James Harding; Jacob Rothschild; and the director of Oxy, a US oil company, Claire Perry O’Neill.
Since May this year, Dudley has also picked up a new gig: he now sits on the board of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia.
It couldn’t have been a busier time for James Harding. He was in the thick of complex and controversial negotiations for the Observer – a deal which journalists, six former editors, and more than 100 artistic and cultural figures have protested, and which has left industry analysts baffled. Yet, amid it all, he found time to be at the event and gave the opening remarks with his characteristic enthusiasm and energy.
It is an indication of how important the annual event – the Responsible Energy Forum – is for Tortoise.
Putin’s Friend
Bob Dudley isn’t the only controversial name on Tortoise Media’s energy ‘advisory board’.
Alongside Claire Perry O’Neill, the executive from Texas-based Oxy (previously Occidental Energy); Ann Davies, a senior VP with BP; Majid Jafar, the CEO of Crescent Petroleum, the largest privately held oil and gas company in the Middle East and a Conservative Party donor; and Philip Lambert, an energy advisor who worked with BP on its TNK Russia deal, is another big beast: Ivan Glasenberg, the former chief executive of, and still major shareholder in, Glencore, one of the biggest commodity firms in the world.
Glasenberg made billions overnight when Glencore floated, and he is now one of the world’s richest men. He, too, was a member of Rosneft’s board under Igor Sechin though he stepped down slightly earlier than Dudley in 2019. But his most extraordinary claim to fame is that Putin personally rewarded him with an ‘Order of Friendship’ medal in 2017 for his contribution to “strengthening cooperation with Russia”, after Glencore took a 19.5% stake in Rosneft.
This was long after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, and the murder of 298 passengers on flight MH17. It was after the US Office of National Intelligence delivered an assessment that Putin had personally ordered an influence campaign against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election.
Glasenberg had retired as CEO from Glencore when US authorities found it guilty in 2022 of committing offences under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but the charges related to a decade-long criminal bribery scheme that involved the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and saw it fined $1.1 billion.
Corporate Capture?
Harding launched Tortoise Media in 2019 with the tagline ‘Slow News’. Having experimented with and then rejected long reads, its best-known output is its narrative podcasts. They have won awards. One has even been turned into a Netflix series.
There is money in podcasts but of the ‘chat’-style variety: in the UK, The News Agents and The Rest is Politics have pioneered a financially lucrative model, generating ad revenue by producing regular content at least twice a week if not more.
Limited series such as Tortoise’s ‘Pig Iron’ or its latest, ‘Elon’s Spies’, are unlikely to generate significant revenue in the short term – their value rests on potential exploitation of IP in the long term, a gamble that may or may not pay off. In the meantime, investigative podcasts are time and resource-hungry, and Tortoise has a staff of around 60 employees to support.
As a private company, its last set of accounts only reveals that it made a £4.6 million loss on £6.2 million turnover. In fact, The Sunday Times’ Business Editor described the firm this weekend as a “thinly capitalised vanity project in search of a commercial model”. But, when James Harding met with Observer journalists after it was revealed that the Guardian had entered into confidential and exclusive talks to sell the newspaper to him, he assured them that there was ‘money behind the money’.
But where is the money behind the money coming from? And what does that mean for the Observer’s journalism? Because, from the outside, it appears as though Tortoise’s journalism may be the least of its revenue-generating activities – and that the real meat of its financial model is its corporate tie-ups: business forums and events for corporate partners.
The Responsible Energy Forum is one of its flagships, but Tortoise has others throughout the year including the Responsible Investment Forum and the Responsible AI Forum – both also hosted with the Rothschild Foundation at Waddesdon – and mini-events it puts on with a range of corporate partners, from Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change to crypto trading start-up, Chia Network.
They follow a similar format: Tortoise hosts the event and James Harding introduces or interviews a senior executive at the organisation with the videos usually uploaded to its social media channels as journalistic content. There are no labels to distinguish corporate partners’ content and other journalistic activity.
It is a ‘pay for play’ model in which companies get to showcase their products or clients alongside journalists and invited guests.
Tortoise Media hasn’t reinvented the wheel here. Many news organisations run events sponsored by big corporates, though they are not usually so tightly enmeshed. But what is unclear, and what Guardian and Observer journalists are now asking is: does this impact Tortoise’s editorial coverage?
On Sunday, as Syria dominated global headlines, Tortoise’s ‘slow news’ approach led it down a different path. Its top story was headlined ‘Saudi Arabia and the Art of Generosity’. The hook was Saudi Arabia’s success in securing the rights to host the 2034 FIFA Men’s World Cup. The article was factual and noted that Saudi Arabia is reported to have executed 303 people so far in 2024, but the meat of it was to detail the British art world’s desperate need for cash and “the upside” that Saudi Arabia has “abolished its religious police, allowed women to drive, ditched segregated restaurants and abolished male guardianship laws”.
There’s no suggestion of direct funding, but the disclosure of Tortoise’s partnership with Brunswick, and the inclusion of both Patrick Handley who acts for Saudi Aramco; and Bob Dudley, Saudi Aramco board member, on its own energy advisory board throws a spotlight on Tortoise’s coverage.
Earlier this year, Aramco and FIFA announced a global partnership that will give the company sponsorship rights to the men’s World Cup in 2026 and the Women’s World Cup the following year. And the Rothschild Foundation, another key Tortoise partner, has itself partnered directly with the Saudi Arabian Government, hosting ministers and the Saudi ambassador at a ‘green energy’ summit.
What isn’t clear, and what James Harding has declined to answer questions about, is whether Tortoise’s commercial contracts impact what, if, or how it covers a subject. Instead, he issued a statement today outlining his commitment to journalism and the foundation of an independent editorial board, headed by his first journalistic boss, ex-Financial Times, Richard Lambert.
Ole Jacob Sunde, Chair of the Scott Trust who owns the Guardian and Observer, also declined to answer questions on Tortoise’s links to energy companies.
In 2020, the Guardian made an appeal to readers to support it after it announced that it was banning all advertising from fossil fuel firms. A statement co-signed by Anna Bateson, the Guardian’s CEO, said: “Our decision is based on the decades-long efforts by many in that industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments around the world.” She highlighted the Guardian’s own reporting on how lobbying by energy companies explicitly harmed the environmental cause.
The China Syndrome
Saudi Arabia isn’t the only state with significant energy interests and money to spend. This week, headlines have been dominated by an alleged Chinese spy who befriended Prince Andrew.
Following mounting political pressure, Yang Tengbo’s name was revealed and a spotlight was shone on the Chinese Government’s extensive influence operations in the UK. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Leader of the Conservative Party, told the BBC that “Yang Tengbo was not a lone wolf”, and pointed to some 40,000 operatives who are known to have “penetrated every section of the UK economy”.
Some of Tengbo’s activities in the UK were conducted via a lobbying firm, Hampton Group International, and journalists have been busy tracking down his extensive network of contacts and business associates, including a 2019 conference he helped organise – the 15th World Chinese Entrepreneurs’ Convention – at which the main plenary was moderated by James Harding.
It was the first time the convention had been held outside of China, at London’s ExCel centre, which as China Daily reported brought together 3,500 people “to promote healthy relationships between British and Chinese business around the world”.
In fact, Lord Rothschild, Harding’s close friend and mentor, and the business partner of his wife’s father, and an enthusiastic advocate for investing in China had – until his death in February this year – actually been on the steering committee for the conference, chaired by Yang Tengbo, and made one of the keynote speeches.
There is no suggestion that James Harding or Tortoise Media were involved in unlawful activity or did anything untoward, but Harding has declined to disclose whether he or Tortoise Media was paid to attend the event, whether he had any further dealings with Yang Tengbo, or whether Tortoise Media has had any commercial dealings with Chinese individuals or entities.
Three years ago, in the same year Harding attended Yang Tengbo’s ExCel event, China’s ambassador to the UK – who was summoned to the Foreign Office earlier this year over allegations of foreign interference – addressed participants at Tortoise Media’s Responsible Energy Forum at the Rothschilds’ Waddesdon Manor. Tortoise Media did not report his words and there are no other records readily available of the event, but the Chinese Embassy published his speech on its own website.
The Deal
Mystery still surrounds the identity of Tortoise’s latest round of investors. At a meeting on 6 December, the day after Tortoise’s Responsible Energy Forum and the second day of the journalists’ strikes, the Scott Trust, the owners of the Guardian and Observer, announced the ‘sale’ would be going ahead.
In fact, there is no ‘sale’. The Scott Trust has committed to giving the Observer to Tortoise Media and its investors along with a cash payment of £5 million. This would top up £20 million which Tortoise has already raised and that would be invested into a newly amalgamated Observer-Tortoise newsroom.
At the meeting, Guardian CEO Anna Bateson was asked for the names of the Scott Trust’s fellow investors. She said it was “too long” and that she would supply it by email after the meeting. The list has still not been shared. The Guardian, the Chair of the Scott Trust, and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Tortoise were all contacted this week and asked to disclose the investors and declined to answer.
In a presentation to staff in October, James Harding told Observer journalists that the investors included existing Tortoise investor, Patrick Healy, CEO of Hellman and Friedman, a US private equity firm. This was also reported in the Telegraph. It is understood that questions about Healy were among those sent from a group of press freedom organisations to the Scott Trust about its concerns over the ‘sale’ of the Observer flagging that Hellman and Friedman had taken investment from Saudi Arabia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and that Healy sat on its investment committee.
This week, a spokesman for Healy said that his investment in Tortoise is as an individual and not on behalf of his firm. He disclosed that, contrary to Harding’s statement, he would not be participating in the latest round. Tortoise Media and the Chair of Scott Trust both declined to comment.
This article was amended on 20/12/24 following a response from Tortoise Media two days after publication to remove references to missing articles which they say were only temporarily unavailable due to a “migration to a new host”.
Carole Cadwalladr is an investigative journalist and features writer who works for the Observer. She was the recipient of the 2018 Orwell Prize for Political Journalism; and a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside The New York Times reporters, for her coverage of the Cambridge Analytica scandal