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.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS