The change in ownership follows the long-running saga over the sale of the Telegraph and The Spectator media business that were formerly owned by the Barclay family.
The titles were originally put up for sale more than a year ago.
Writing about the deal, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson said: “The price we’ve been sold for, £100 million, speaks to that belief in our potential. We were valued at £20 million when we separated from the Daily Telegraph in 2005.
“Since then, the magazine market has fallen by about two-thirds but our subscriptions have more than doubled. This 5x valuation increase is, to put it mildly, rare in our industry.”
Nelson said the auction for the venerable title, in print since 1828, had attracted 22 potential bidders, “including some of the greatest and most respected names in British and European publishing”.
In its most recent accounts, for calendar year 2022, The Spectator posted sales of £20.8m, of which nearly £16.3m came from circulation revenues.
Operating profit was £2.6m, with pre-tax profit coming in at the same figure – a massive 38 times profit valuation based on the 2022 performance.
The printed magazine has a weekly circulation of 72,099 while its website has 2.24m unique users monthly.
It lays claim to being the oldest continually published magazine in the English language.
The magazine is printed at Walstead Peterborough.
Marshall is also an investor in TV and broadcasting company GB News.
Spectator chairman Andrew Neil was also chairman of GB News when it launched in 2021 but then stepped down shortly afterwards after disagreeing with management and the channel’s board over its future direction.
He had previously announced that he would step down from his Spectator role when a takeover deal had completed.
In a lengthy post on X, Neil spoke about his pride in the Spectator’s achievements during his time at the helm.
“My proudest recollection will always be the fact that, at a time when legacy print publications were relentlessly cost-cutting and regularly making huge numbers of good people redundant, I did not preside over a single compulsory redundancy in 20 years,” he said.
“Far from shedding folk we were always expanding and hiring. And we did so in a way that turned what once seemed like a largely Eton-Oxbridge fiefdom into probably the most meritocratic publication in the country.”
Nelson also paid tribute to Neil’s contribution to the title’s success in his column.
Marshall could still be in the frame to take over the Telegraph Media Group, with remaining potential buyers – also believed to include David Montgomery’s National World – working to a deadline of 27 September for their revised bids, according to reports.
