Sky News has learnt that the newspaper's holding company's new independent directors have asked Russell Reynolds Associates to handle the process.

City sources said prospective candidates had begun being sounded out about the role in recent days.

The appointment of a new chair will come as Lloyds Banking Group - the main lender to the Barclay family, the Telegraph titles' former owner - prepares to hire bankers to orchestrate a sale.

Lazard, which is already advising Lloyds, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are understood to be in contention for that role.

Insiders said that Stephen Welch and Boudewijn Wentink, who were appointed by receivers AlixPartners, would decide on the preferred candidate for the chairmanship.

The impending auction of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph titles, and the weekly current affairs magazine, The Spectator, is expected by some analysts to fetch in the region of £600m.

Read more:
Who is in the running to buy The Telegraph?

The Barclay family has been working with advisers at Houlihan Lokey to try to retain control of the assets.

Lloyds is owed roughly £1bn by the family, which also owns the Yodel delivery service and the Very Group online shopping platform.

Carlyle, the private equity firm which already holds a portion of debt attached to Barclay-backed companies including the online shopping business Very Group, is understood to have been involved in talks with the family.

Lloyds took the bombshell decision to place the newspapers' indirect holding company into receivership last month.

The sale process will be among the most hotly contested media auctions in Britain for years and is expected to draw interest from billionaires, Tory donors and other media groups.

Mr Barclay is the nephew of Sir Frederick Barclay, the octogenarian who along with late brother Sir David engineered the takeover of the Telegraph in 2004.

TMG and Lloyds declined to comment.