The interesting thing to me is that Zell apparently bought the Tribune with the cash in the pension fund and loans from banks.
The employees are now pensionless and the bank debt is merely part of the overall unfathomable bad debt aggregate. Zelll’s loss turns out to be time.
Back when this was all going down 1 1/2 years ago, I emailed every business reporter I could and pointed this out. To my knowledge, only Theo Francis of the WSJ wrote very much about it. I even talked with one of the biz reporters at the LAT, but all he ever said was that he was “concerned” about it.
Watch for a slew of stories in the next few days about how the employees were screwed out of their retirement.
Finally, a couple of months ago, several retirees filed suit.
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/09/extimes_reporters_sue_zel.php
Ex-Times reporters sue Zell