In February, a Shawbrook-backed media firm announced that it had acquired a stake in the news website Al Jazeera America.
The media group, which operates in the US, has also said that it will soon become a joint venture between Al Jazeera and the Saudi-backed Al Jazeera Media Network.
The deal has been described as a major deal for Shawbrook, and one that could give it a powerful voice in the Middle East, where it operates a news network with offices in Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco and Qatar.
In the past, Shawbrook has had to defend its media holdings against allegations that they support terrorist organisations, but now it may have an opportunity to reframe its approach to its operations.
“We have made a deal with a company called Shawbrook to purchase a portion of our assets and to share the profits with them,” Shawbrook’s president and CEO Alistair Maitland told Reuters.
“The joint venture with Al Jazeera will provide us with a very significant opportunity to build a very strong media business in the Arab world.”
Al Jazeera America was founded in 2005 by two former newsmen from the BBC, Meir Amitay and Peter Greste, who had earlier been involved in the BBC’s news operations.
The news network, based in New York, is part of the BBC World Service and is one of the most widely watched channels in the world.
Shawbrook, which is based in Dorset, has a number of partnerships with other media groups, including the Al Jazeera English and the Al Arabiya English channels, and the broadcaster has also been involved with a number other international media groups.
Since the deal was announced, Al Jazeera has been criticised for not having the right security measures in place, and for not being able to fully vet its newsroom staff.
But Maitlan said the media group has always been able to provide news in the region and has always had access to its own staff.
“The deal we have announced today with Al Arabiyah, we have not had to do anything special in relation to our security arrangements,” he said.
Al Arabiya, meanwhile, has denied that it is working with Shawbrook or Al Jazeera. (Reuters) “Al Arabiyat has been working with Al Shawbrook for over 10 years,” the company said in a statement.
“We have always maintained a strong relationship with Al Qataris and Al Shawbro in the country.
At the moment, we are working with both parties to provide full coverage of the events in Syria and the region.”
According to Al Arabiya, Shawbro had approached Al Jazeera about buying its assets in January.
According the company, the two parties agreed that the transaction would be made “in a transparent and transparent way” and that Al Jazeera would share in the proceeds with Shawbro.
Last month, Al Arabia announced that the deal had been completed, and that Shawbrook would share the proceeds.
It said that Shawbro’s deal was structured as a joint-venture and that the media firm would have “exclusive rights to broadcast and edit news content from Al Jazeera’s offices and networks in the Gulf”.
“Shawbro has a long history of investment in Middle East news and has established strong relationships with several Arab media organisations in the past,” Al Arabiyah said in the statement.
On Monday, Al Shawbaya said that the two sides had reached an agreement on a “mutual agreement”.
However, Al Sham, Al Shad and Al Alwa news websites were not mentioned in the announcement.
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