Posted on 03/19/2009 8:06:16 AM PDT by BAW
The parent company of The San Diego Union-Tribune announced yesterday that it plans to sell the paper to a Beverly Hills private equity firm that specializes in turning around troubled ventures.
The buyer, Platinum Equity, is a 14-year-old firm headed by billionaire investor Tom Gores. It has purchased companies in industries as diverse as information technology and metal processing.
This is its first newspaper deal. A principal in the firm said newspapers were a logical target, given the steep challenges the industry faces, such as circulation declines and growing online competition.
“There's no question that the newspaper industry is undergoing a period of tremendous upheaval, and we're not blind to that,” Platinum principal Mark Barnhill said. “But that said, we would not be making this acquisition if we were not confident about our ability to succeed in this business and in that market in particular.”
Union-Tribune owner The Copley Press Inc. had been seeking a buyer since July, when it hired investment bankers to explore “strategic options” amid a nationwide decline in newspaper advertising. The Copley family of La Jolla has owned newspapers in San Diego since 1928 but is among relatively few remaining local owners of major newspapers.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
(Excerpt) Read more at 3.signonsandiego.com ...
Beginning of the end.
They will regret this purchase.
The feds should not be allowed to bail out any newspaper with taxpayer money, period end of story. If they do, we should all join together and kick them all out of office!
They bought the property and buildings. The printing presses and the reporters and the distribution system probably were a net deduct to the sale price.
http://voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/03/19/economics/856uniontrib031809.txt
The Copley Sale: Real Estate (and a Newspaper)
Are Richard Gere and Julia Roberts involved? /sarc
The UT was a pretty good paper on balance. But news distributed on dead tree is a losing venture.
This is the best investment since Cerberus bought Chrysler
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