Tribune Co has accepted a buyout offer from real estate investor Sam Zell in a deal valued at about US$8.2 billion, the media company said yesterday.
Tribune said Zell plans to invest US$315 million in the deal and the company will sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team at the end of this season.
He will eventually become chairman of the Chicago-based company's board when the deal is complete.
Members of a special committee of board members had spent much of the week sifting through dueling offers for the US's second-largest newspaper publisher by circulation.
The Zell offer involved an ESOP, which resembles a profit-sharing plan, but allows the company to borrow money and repay loans using pretax dollars.
Payments of both interest and principal are tax-deductible and would create more leverage for a buyer.
Tribune also is said to be considering a "self-help" plan that would involve spinning off the company's broadcast division and borrowing money to pay a one-time cash dividend to shareholders.
Like most newspaper companies, Tribune has been struggling with declining profits, circulation and advertising revenues.
Last month, the company announced revenue had fallen 3.4 percent in February as its publishing division continued to struggle.
In addition to the Chicago Tribune, the company owns nine other daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, as well as 23 TV stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
Tribune's share price fell about 50 percent from early 2004 until last spring and has languished at just above US$30 for months, down from an all-time high of $60.88 in November 1999.
Its shares climbed nearly 2 percent on Friday on the NYSE as investors awaited an announcement from the company.
Zell, 65, has earned a reputation as an astute investor, making his fortune reviving moribund real estate.
After a bidding war culminated in February, he sold his company, Equity Office, to the private equity firm Blackstone Group for US$23 billion.
He is proposed using an employee stock ownership plan as a way to lower the taxes of any sale, but has said he had no plans to break up the company.
Tribune said yesterday that it was planning to sell the Chicago Cubs at the end of this year's baseball season.
This would put one of its most valuable assets on the block as it simultaneously announced Zell was acquiring the media conglomerate.
Analysts have estimated that the Cubs could fetch US$600 million or more.
Tribune bought the baseball team in 1981 for approximately US$20 million.
"The Cubs have been an important part of Tribune for more than 25 years and are one of the most storied franchises in all of sports," said Dennis FitzSimons, Tribune chairman, president and chief executive officer.
"In our last season of ownership, the team has one mission, and that is to win for our great fans," her added.
Tribune said the company's 25 percent interest in Comcast SportsNetChicago would be part of the sale package.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have declared they survived recall votes to remove them from office today, although official results are still pending as the vote counting continues. Although final tallies from the Central Election Commission (CEC) are still pending, preliminary results indicate that the recall campaigns against all seven KMT lawmakers have fallen short. As of 6:10 pm, Taichung Legislators Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) and Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔), Hsinchu County Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘), Nantou County Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and New Taipei City Legislator Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才) had all announced they
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday visited Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), as the chipmaker prepares for volume production of Nvidia’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. It was Huang’s third trip to Taiwan this year, indicating that Nvidia’s supply chain is deeply connected to Taiwan. Its partners also include packager Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密) and server makers Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Quanta Computer Inc (廣達). “My main purpose is to visit TSMC,” Huang said yesterday. “As you know, we have next-generation architecture called Rubin. Rubin is very advanced. We have now taped out six brand new
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
RSS