"Start melting the butter---lots of it."
Posted on 06/14/2006 9:07:12 AM PDT by abb
Harry Chandler of The Los Angeles Times and Colonel Robert R. McCormick of The Chicago Tribune were both towering figures of newspaper publishing in the first half of the 20th century.
And like many newspaper moguls, both created trusts to safeguard the papers they built and the causes they championed. Both wanted to extend their fortunes and influence down through the generations.
But decades after their deaths, the Chandler and McCormick legacies have come into stark contrast on the board of the Tribune Company, the media giant that today publishes 11 daily newspapers, including The Times and The Tribune, and owns 26 television stations.
On one side are more than 170 descendants of Mr. Chandler and his father-in-law, Harrison Gray Otis, a scattered group of distant cousins whose regular contact is an annual picnic that some family members attend each Memorial Day weekend near the California coast.
On the other is the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, which Colonel McCormick, who had no children, left behind to finance a range of charities. The McCormick foundation is the Tribune Company's single largest shareholder, with 13.6 percent of its stock, while two trusts representing the Chandlers hold a 12.2 percent stake.
The trusts have taken starkly different views of the Tribune management's plan to revive the company's slumping shares, with the Chandler descendants opposing the roughly $2 billion stock buyback the company has announced.
At stake in the dispute is not just money, but possibly control over the company's direction. The Chandlers fear that management's buyback plan could limit Tribune's strategic options — and the value of their stake. And management, which also controls the McCormick trusts, is wary that the Chandlers want a financial structure that could benefit them while saddling the company with a big tax bill.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Pinging with yet more Good News...
I thought trust were wrong, a way to avoid estate tax and to ensure that continuing of wealthy families to have powere. /sarc
As a gesture to pay their fair share, these trust should be dissolved.
How about this simple solution.
Fire every reporter, editorialist and editor. Go out and hire people with integrity and who will tell the truth instead of spewing anti American propaganda.
Then reap the fortunes of greater circulation numbers.
When the elite super rich old line owners of the Dinosaur Fish Wraps get into hissy fights and throw caviar and their depends at each other. We can plop into our easy chairs, pop a cool one, eat some pop corn, and watch the hissy caviar/Depend tossing fights.
Dave, ain't it funny how when it gets down to the ol' trust fund dollars, all them high sounding principles go out the window, lol?
The inside Class A stocks that make up these trust funds starts to be hurt, these super rich bastards get very capitalistic and greedy.
Burkle can help by selling the papers to the unions, to CALPERS, to CALSTARS...with big commissions going to Yucaipa.../s
"Start melting the butter---lots of it."
Burkle can help by selling the papers to the unions, to CALPERS, to CALSTARS...with big commissions going to Yucaipa.../s
Burkle will put very little of his funds into this dying dinasour, the LA Slimes. He will Ponzi the funds from the various pension funds as you noted above and the Union Thugs.
And like many newspaper moguls, both created trusts to safeguard the papers they built and the causes they championed. Both wanted to extend their fortunes and influence down through the generations.
And yet we are told there is no bias in the media. No activism in journalism. LIES.
"Burkle knows that these fishwraps are dying, so he will not put any personal money into them.
But Burkle, for big commissions, would put the unions and their money into the fishwraps."
Yep, using OPM for power, glory and commissions, is a Burkle trademark.
What a curly sentence! You could read it to say that the father-in-law was still around, along with the 170 unnamed cousins. The guy must have great genes to live so long!
This just in!! Fresh news... One more ping...
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=AP&Date=20060614&ID=5796858
Chandlers Call for Tribune Breakup
Associated Press
All Associated Press News
NEW YORK (AP) - The second-largest shareholder of Tribune Co. on Wednesday called for a breakup of the Chicago-based media company, saying its strategy of combining broadcasting and newspaper properties in large cities has failed.
The Chandler family, which owns 12 percent of Tribune's shares, also said in a regulatory filing that they would not tender their shares as part of a major buyback the company is undertaking.
The company had disclosed earlier that the Chandlers opposed the buyback, but didn't detail their reasons. In a letter to the company's board of directors included in a regulatory filing Wednesday, the Chandlers called the process by which the board considered the buyback "fundamentally flawed" and "a purely financial device that fails altogether to address the real business issues facing Tribune."
The Chandlers also have the right to name three of Tribune's 11 directors. Those three directors had voted against the buyback.
Tribune's shares have risen in recent sessions following the disclosure of the Chandlers' dissent as expectations grew among investors that Tribune may have to consider more dramatic action beyond the buyback to boost its long-lagging share price.
Following the disclosure of the Chandlers' letter, Tribune shares rose again, jumping 75 cents or 2.4 percent to $31.80 in active trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Tribune's tender offer has a maximum price of $32.50.
In their letter, the Chandlers said Tribune must find a way to separate its broadcasting holdings from its newspaper business, saying that the company's strategy of owning both broadcasting and newspaper properties in the same cities has failed to deliver growth.
They also noted that an anticipated change in regulations that would have made the cross-ownership of television and newspaper properties in the same cities permanently legal has not yet occurred.
The Chandlers became significant holders of Tribune following its purchase of Times Mirror Co., of which they were major shareholders, in 2000
A fight between two dinosaur fish wraps is pretty good already. A fight between the antique commie media and the commie union thugs is a delight to be cherished!
-ccm
Chandler Trusts call for possible Tribune sale By David B. Wilkerson, MarketWatch Last Update: 1:49 PM ET Jun 14, 2006
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Tribune Co.'s second-largest shareholder has raised the stakes in its dispute over the company's strategic direction, calling for "decisive action" by the newspaper publisher and broadcaster, including a possible sale.
The Chandler Trusts, which own more than 12% of Tribune's (TRB) outstanding shares, had objected last week to Tribune's plan to buy back up to 25% of its stock, which was part of an attempt to lift a stock price that has lost nearly half its value in the last two years. Most of those shares are to be purchased in Dutch-auction tender offer. In a regulatory filing late Tuesday, the trusts said Tribune has failed to respond effectively to a number of "serious challenges" facing the industry, and must act now to protect the interests of shareholders.
The trusts said Tribune must separate its newspaper business from its television broadcasting business and begin to explore other strategic alternatives, which could include tax-free spin-offs of its newspaper assets or the sale of the company as a whole.
Tribune owns such newspapers as the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun. It also owns 26 television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team, among other properties.
Tribune should also move to appoint a committee of independent directors to make a "thorough review and evaluation" of the issues facing Tribune and help execute a plan to deal with them, the trusts said.
A Tribune spokesman was in a meeting and was not immediately available for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Last week, the company responded to the Chandler Trusts' objections to the buyback by issuing a statement pointing out that eight of the 11 members of Tribune's board of directors had approved the plan. It also said at the time that it does not comment on private conversations among board members.
Cross-platform strategy hit by ad weakness In a blistering 11-page letter, the trusts said that the cross-platform strategy Tribune used to justify its 2000 acquisition of Times-Mirror has failed, and its hope that federal rules prohibiting the ownership of a newspaper and television station in the same market would be repealed, has yet to be fulfilled.
In purchasing Times-Mirror, Tribune added the Los Angeles Times to a market where it already owned KTLA-TV, a WB affiliate. It also added Newsday in New York, where it owned WB station WPIX-TV. The acquisition also gave Tribune the Hartford Courant in Hartford, Conn., adding to its ownership of two TV stations in that market. The company had hoped to generate bigger advertising sales in these markets, and expand the reach of its Internet properties in each area. But a weak advertising environment hampering all media in the past three years has been particularly hard on newspapers.
A migration to online news consumption has proven to be devastating, particularly in large metropolitan areas. A traumatic period for the auto industry has also been detrimental, along with consolidation among retailers, the biggest buyers of newspaper advertising. In addition, the implementation of the Do Not Call Registry has made it harder for papers to solicit new subscribers.
"Over the past two years, Tribune has significantly underperformed industry averages and there is scant evidence to suggest the next two years will be any different," the trusts said.
Before undertaking the tender offer, Tribune should have first tried to come up with "a cogent and realistic strategy for restoring the value of Tribune's businesses and assets prior to creating a financial structure that limits strategic options," the trusts said. The "credibility" of Tribune's management has now been called into question, the letter went on, and the buyback plan has created "uncertainty" about Tribune's strategic direction. Tribune shares were up 3% at $31.94 in afternoon trading on Wednesday. End of Story
David B. Wilkerson is a reporter for MarketWatch in Chicago.
Eventually, we will see these various factions taking their frustrations of being chronic losers in life on each other.
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