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 [[1]]).

The Barclay brothers were born in London to Scottish Roman Catholic parents and 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 [[2]]).

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. The Spectator is a weekly magazine formerly edited by Matthew D'Ancona. Press Holdings current publisher (chief executive and editor-in-chief) of Press Holdings is Andrew Neil, who has been in this post since 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.