The chief executive of the production company at the heart of the controversy that surrounded the documentary about the Queen yesterday launched a bid to take it private.

David Frank, RDF Media's founder, is understood to have gained tentative support for a bid - at a price not yet determined - from the 27 per cent shareholder Cyrte Investments. It manages the fortune of John de Mol, the billionaire founder of Endemol, the producer of Big Brother.

RDF Media's shares leapt 32 per cent to 126p as the market tried to guess the likely level of a takeover bid. However, the shares remain at half the level they were before the row last year about how footage of the Queen was edited in a promotional trailer for a BBC documentary.

The management team is being advised by Landesbanki and had written to the company's independent directors with an outline proposal that is not thought to have contained a firm price. Nor is it clear how firm the alliance with de Mol's Cyrte is although, if the two groups stick together, they control more than half the shares.

Roddy Davidson, an analyst at Altium Capital, said that 125p was “our target price” for the company, and that a cash bid at that level would probably be considered fair value by investors, although it is below the 144p a share at which it floated in 2005. It was widely believed at that time that production companies had a bright future on the stock market.

The honeymoon ended dramatically last July when Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC One, aired a clip that appeared to show the Queen storming out of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz when she had been walking in.

The clip was put together by Stephen Lambert, RDF's chief creative officer, who was forced to resign from the company. Mr Fincham also resigned from the BBC.

The BBC and ITV suspended new commissions from RDF Media, and while both bans have been lifted, the producer regarded its prospects as damaged. There has been speculation that Mr Frank, a former investment banker, has been looking for an exit for months. He owns a 12 per cent stake, while his brother Matthew owns a further 3 per cent.

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