David and Frederick Barclay

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Sir David Barclay and Sir Frederick Barclay (both born on 27 October, 1934) are British businessmen. They are twin brothers and are frequently described as being reclusive, which their spokesmen deny. Sir David's son, Aidan Barclay, manages their UK businesses.

Their Press Holdings company owns The Business and The Spectator magazine. The Telegraph Group Limited titles are controlled via a wholly owned subsidiary Press Acquisitions Limited (see ).

The Barclay brothers were born within ten minutes of each other in London to Scottish Roman Catholic parents who had ten children. Their father died when they were 12 and left school four years later to work in the accounts department at General Electric, before doing a stint as painters and decorators.

By 1962, they started redeveloping old boarding houses in London and making them into goteks. In 1975, they bought the Howard Hotel, overlooking the Thames at Temple Place. In 1983 they bought Ellerman, the brewing and shipping group for £45m. They later sold its brewing division for £240m. In 1992, the entered the newspaper industry buying the late Robert Maxwell's unsuccessful newspaper, the European. Three years later, they bought The Scotsman newspaper which they sold in January 2005. David Short, a journalist who previously worked on the European, said that he could offer no stories of "strong-armed interference, diktats, statesmannish grandiosity - zilch, nada, rien."

They are reported to be close friends of Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster. According to newspaper reports, the Cardinal has stayed at the Barclay brothers' home on the Channel Island of Brecqhou and is believed to have blessed the brothers' private chapel and said Mass for them there (see ).

The Barclays are noted philanthropists and were knighted in 2000 for their support to medical reseach to which they have given an estimated £40 million between 1987 and 2000.

In 1993, the Barclay brothers bought the tenement of the island of Brecqhou, one of the Channel Islands, located just west of Sark. Since the purchase the Barclays have been in several legal disputes with the government of Sark and have expressed a desire to make Brecqhou politically independent from Sark.

In 2002, the brothers purchased the Liverpool based retail company Littlewoods P.L.C. from its founders the Moores family for £750m. The brothers merged the company with Shop Direct to form Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited, which operates a majority share of the United Kingdom's home shopping market.

In 2004 they were listed in 42nd place with an estimate of £750m on the Sunday Times Rich List, and in 2005 they were ranked 33rd with a value of £1.3Billion (USD $2.3,000,000,000).

In July 2004, they bought The Telegraph Group which includes The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, after months of intense bidding and lawsuits. The Telegraph Group was owned by Hollinger Inc. of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the newspaper group controlled by the disgraced Canadian-born British businessman/financier Lord Black of Crossharbour.

Hollinger also owned The Spectator which the Barclays control through Press Holdings and hired Andrew Neil to run this division in 1999.

On 19 December, 2005, they sold The Scotsman Publications Ltd., itself then part of Press Holdings Group, for £160 million to Johnston Press. The Barclays had owned these publications for a decade, and intend to use the capital raised on their other interests.

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