Sir Paul Marshall has been confirmed as the new owner of influential political magazine The Spectator.

The hedge fund magnate bought the publication from Abu Dhabi-backed fund RedBird IMI for ￡100 million.

The 65-year-old multi-millionaire has snapped up the business, following a lengthy auction process, through his Old Queen Street Ventures company.

The Spectator, and sister publication art magazine Apollo, will be swallowed by the business which already runs online magazine UnHerd.

It represents a continued shift in the business interests of Sir Paul.

The financier, whose sister is ITV journalist Penny Marshall, was born in London in 1959.

He is currently recognised for supporting conservative-leaning causes but had a longstanding association with Liberal Democrats in his earlier years.

Sir Paul was a research assistant to former party leader Charles Kennedy in 1985 and stood for Parliament for the SDP-Liberal Alliance in Fulham two years later.

He later built a career in investment banking before launching his own investment firm Marshall Wace in 1997, with 50 million US dollars (￡38 million), half of which came from Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.

Marshall Wace has since become one of the UK’s most successful hedge funds, with a rapid expansion which has built it up to oversee more than 65 billion US dollars (￡49.6 billion) in assets.

Sir Paul donated ￡200,000 to the Liberal Democrats between 2002 and 2015 as he built up his wealth but left the party in 2015 after disagreeing with the party’s position on the Brexit referendum.

He was a significant supporter of the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, providing a ￡100,000 donation to the Leave campaign in 2016.

Later that year, he also shifted his support towards the Conservative Party. He handed a ￡3,250 donation to Michael Gove’s leadership campaign that year. He has since donated a further ￡500,000 to the party.

In 2016, he was knighted in the Birthday Honours for services to education and philanthropy.

This was partly linked to ARK (Absolute Return for Kids), the children’s charity he founded with Ian Wace, and has grown to include a 39-strong trust of academy schools.