Scott Trust Limited

London, England, UK · Company number 06706464 · Company limited by shares

Status note: The Observer — the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, owned by Guardian Media Group since 1993 — was sold to Tortoise Media in December 2024, completing a transaction that generated significant staff opposition including a two-day strike. The Scott Trust retains a 9% equity stake in Tortoise Media and seats on its editorial and commercial boards. The Observer passed to Tortoise Media's editorial control in early 2025.

Overview

Scott Trust Limited is the British company that owns Guardian Media Group (GMG) and, through it, The Guardian — one of the world's most widely read English-language newspapers and among the last major quality newspapers in Britain not owned by a commercial proprietor with financial interests that may conflict with editorial independence. The structure was designed to make that independence permanent: not merely promised by a proprietor who might change their mind, but built into the ownership architecture itself. No shareholder may profit from the Scott Trust. Profits generated by GMG are reinvested into journalism. The Trust's eleven-member board has the power to appoint and, in extreme circumstances, to dismiss the editor of The Guardian, but beyond enjoining continued operation "on the same lines and in the same spirit as heretofore," has a policy of not interfering in editorial decisions. The arrangement has produced editors of unusual longevity and independence — Alan Rusbridger held the position for twenty years, from 1995 to 2015 — and a journalism culture that has repeatedly published material damaging to powerful interests, from the Pentagon Papers' British dimensions to the Edward Snowden NSA disclosures, without commercial owners demanding restraint.

The company was incorporated on 24 September 2008 as Scott Place 1001 Limited, adopted its current name on 3 October 2008, and carries the Companies House number 06706464. It is registered in England and Wales. The current chair of the Scott Trust board is Ole Jacob Sunde, a Norwegian businessman who replaced Alex Graham in March 2021. The editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Katharine Viner (who has held the role since 2015), sits on the Trust board. A journalist director — currently Haroon Siddique, Guardian legal affairs correspondent — sits on the board as the staff journalistic voice, a position that carries a maximum term of five years to prevent capture by institutional interests.

History: The Manchester Guardian and the Scott Family

The Manchester Guardian was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor, a Manchester cotton merchant and journalist, with financial backing from a group of Nonconformist businessmen. The paper was shaped into its distinctive liberal, independent character above all by C. P. Scott, who became editor in 1872 at the age of 25 and held the position for 57 years — editing the paper until 1929, when he was 82. Under Scott, the Manchester Guardian established its reputation as one of the great liberal newspapers in the English-speaking world: opposed to the Boer War, supportive of Irish Home Rule, committed to accuracy and to the principle that comment is free but facts are sacred — a formulation Scott published in a 1921 centenary essay that has since become perhaps the most cited statement in Anglo-American journalism ethics. Scott purchased the paper outright in 1907 and left it to his sons John and Edward on his death in 1932.

When both John's father and brother died within a short period, John Russell Scott confronted the prospect that death duties would force a sale of the newspaper — which he and his family regarded as incompatible with its liberal character and independence. To prevent this, he established the Scott Trust on 8 June 1936, transferring his shares in the Manchester Guardian and Evening News to a small group of trustees who were bound to maintain the paper's editorial values and were prohibited from personally benefiting financially from the arrangement. John Scott was the first and only chairman of the original Trust. He died in 1949, five months after signing the reconstituted trust deed of 1948 — which had been necessary because changes in tax law had created a liability for the original structure.

Structure: From Trust to Limited Company

The second Scott Trust operated from 1948 until 2008, during which The Guardian (as the Manchester Guardian was renamed in 1959) moved its headquarters to London, acquired The Observer in 1993, and grew into a global digital news operation. Five chairmen led the Trust during its sixty years: Alfred Powell Wadsworth (1948–56), Richard Farquhar Scott (1956–84), Alastair Hetherington (1984–89), Hugo Young (1990–2003), and Liz Forgan (2003–2008). In 2008, with the advice that non-charitable trusts have a finite legal lifespan and that a limited company structure would offer stronger permanent protection, the Trust was wound up and its assets transferred to Scott Trust Limited — a company limited by shares in which the shares carry no economic rights for their holders. No one can profit by holding shares in Scott Trust Limited. This structure achieves in corporate law what the original trust attempted in trust law: the permanent removal of the Guardian from the proprietorial market.

Scott Trust Limited sits above Guardian Media Group plc in the ownership chain. GMG is the trading entity that directly owns The Guardian and, until December 2024, The Observer, and that manages the group's digital and commercial operations. Alongside STL, a separate vehicle — Scott Trust Endowment Limited (STEL) — manages the investment endowment that provides financial security for the group. The endowment was valued at approximately £1.03 billion in 2017 and £1.01 billion in 2018; by the early 2020s it had grown to approximately £1.2 billion. The target return is CPI plus 5% annualised. The endowment is invested with a stated stewardship approach that includes alignment with the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change and the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association. GMG also operates GMG Ventures LP, a £42 million venture capital fund focused on emerging media technologies.

The Observer Sale, 2024

The Observer — founded in 1791 and the world's oldest Sunday newspaper — was acquired by Guardian Media Group in 1993 and had operated under Scott Trust ownership for 31 years when GMG announced in September 2024 that it was in negotiations with Tortoise Media to sell the title. Tortoise Media was founded in 2018 by James Harding, former Director of BBC News and former editor of The Times, and Matthew Barzun, former US Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

The proposed sale immediately generated intense opposition from Observer and Guardian staff. The Observer's editor at the time, Paul Webster — who had set his retirement for November 2024 before the sale was revealed — stated publicly that Scott Trust chair Ole Jacob Sunde had refused to consult him on the sale and had denied his request to address the Trust board in person. In an open letter signed by more than 100 Observer and Guardian staff — including the Trust's own journalist director Haroon Siddique and former journalist director Nils Pratley — critics questioned whether selling the Observer, which had operated without profit and as an integral part of the Guardian's journalism, was compatible with the Trust's stated mandate to promote liberal journalism; whether a £5 million investment for a 9% stake in Tortoise represented fair value; and how placing the Observer behind a paywall at Tortoise fulfilled the mission of accessible liberal journalism. A two-day journalists' strike was held on 4 and 5 December 2024. The Scott Trust board approved the sale during the strike, and the deal was confirmed on 18 December 2024.

Under the terms of the sale, Observer editorial and commercial staff were offered voluntary redundancy on enhanced terms or transfer to Tortoise Media on existing contracts. By February 2025, approximately 24 Observer staff — around one-third of the total — had taken redundancy, with 46 transferring to Tortoise. The Scott Trust retained a 9% equity stake in Tortoise Media, committed £5 million in cash, and took positions on Tortoise's editorial and commercial boards. The cash consideration Tortoise paid to the Scott Trust for the Observer was not disclosed. The Observer passed to Tortoise's editorial control in early 2025.

The Slavery Apology and Restorative Justice Program

In 2020, Scott Trust Limited commissioned independent academic research into the involvement of the Guardian's founding figures — principally John Edward Taylor and his network of Manchester cotton merchant backers — in the transatlantic slave economy. The cotton trade that funded the Manchester Guardian in its founding years was directly linked to the slave-produced cotton of the American South, and Taylor himself had business relationships with firms that depended on enslaved labor. In 2023, following completion of that research, the Scott Trust issued a formal public apology for the founding proprietors' involvement in transatlantic slavery and announced a £10 million, ten-year programme of restorative justice. The program includes investment in journalism, scholarships, and community initiatives in communities with historical connections to the Atlantic slave trade. The apology and programme were among the first of their kind from a major British news organization and attracted significant attention as an example of institutional accountability for historical harms.

The Guardian Foundation

The Guardian Foundation is a separate charitable organization supported by Scott Trust Limited, focused on press freedom, journalistic training, and media literacy globally. Its flagship programme is the Scott Trust Bursary, established in 1987 to support aspiring journalists from underrepresented backgrounds, covering university fees and providing financial support for six recipients per year. The bursary marked its 37th year in 2025. The Foundation also conducts media literacy workshops with children and young people in the UK and internationally, and supports media organizations in regions where press freedom is under threat.

Board Governance

The Scott Trust board has eleven members. Non-executive directors serve an initial term of five years, renewable for a further five. The journalist director drawn from among Guardian staff serves a maximum of five years total — a term limit designed to prevent capture and to provide opportunities for different journalists to bring their perspective to governance. Any board member appointed as a member of the Scott family may be reappointed for successive five-year periods subject to an overall maximum. The current board includes chair Ole Jacob Sunde (Norwegian businessman, appointed 2021), Russell Scott as senior independent director, editor-in-chief Katharine Viner, and journalist director Haroon Siddique. In November 2024, Jonathan Paine — a former managing director and senior adviser at Rothschild & Co — was appointed to the board. Anna Bateson serves as CEO of Guardian Media Group and attends board meetings in an observer capacity.

Access and Usage

The Guardian publishes at theguardian.com on a reader-supported model — free to read with reader contributions requested rather than required. The Scott Trust's governance documents, including its corporate governance report, are publicly available at theguardian.com/gmg/scott-trust. Companies House filings for Scott Trust Limited are available at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06706464. Guardian Media Group publishes annual reports and accounts through its investor relations pages. The Guardian Foundation's work and the Scott Trust Bursary are described at theguardianfoundation.org.