Speculation surrounds the future of Britain’s Telegraph Media Group after it was put up for sale by receivers.

The broadsheet heavyweight is on the market after the reclusive Barclay family failed to service debts owed to Lloyds Banking Group.

Other publishers in the UK’s varied London-centric market are being eyed as potential purchasers, if regulators were to allow the implicit concentration of interest.

Such considerations may rule out Rupert Murdoch’s News UK – which owns The Times and The Sun and their respective Sunday papers, and also prints The Telegraph – but Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail & General Trust is considered a likely contender, given interest when the the Telegraph went up for auction in 2004, and the group’s growth.

Trade publication UK Press Gazette estimated that acquisition of TMG could give DMGT a share of the daily newspaper market of more than 50 per cent.

With figures no longer reported to the ABC by four of the national publishers, Press Gazette used figures from the others to estimate circulations, providing for average circulation decline of about 16 per cent year-on-year. The estimates put the average total circulation of all daily national newspapers in the UK at 3,845,861, and the Telegraph’s small-but-influential 188,371 copies a day enough to push DMGT above 50  per cent of the market. None of the publishers responded to a request for comment on the estimates.

Press Gazette put News UK’s share of the Sunday national newspaper market at 40 per cent, DMGT – through Mail on Sunday alone – at 26 per cent, and the Sunday Telegraph at almost six per cent.

The publication says that apart from political similarities, there are commercial reasons DMGT might want to purchase TMG, including its consistent profits despite the long-term decline of print.

Audience profiles are similar, with both dominated by ABC1 (middle or upper class) readers and the Telegraph claiming 81 per cent. Elsewhere, analysis by FT Alphaville suggested TMG’s subscription may have plateaued, with as much as 16 per cent of current subscriptions being free or steeply discounted.

Pictured: Digitally, the Telegraph has followed DMGT’s lead into long headlines