Posted on 02/12/2010 2:10:58 PM PST by abb
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu isn't just one of The New York Times Co.'s creditors anymore -- he's now one of their biggest stockholders, according to a Security and Exchange Commission filing Friday.
Slim exercised warrants for 15.9 million in Class A shares for a strike price of $6.3572 through his companies Inmobiliaria and GFI, raising his stake in the Times Co. to 16.3% from 6.9% at the time he was approached to loan a substantial sum to the venerable publisher.
Slim got the warrants in January 2009 when he lent the Times Co. $250 million. The company said that that he would not be joining the board. The Class A common shares he bought is publicly traded stock, not the super-voting shares that gives the Ochs and Sulzberger family control of the company.
On Wednesday, the Times Co. announced it had tripled its profit in Q4 and indicated that advertising revenue declines were moderating. Barclays Capital released a research note upgrading the company to overweight due mostly to what analysts believe is a more manageable debt level.
Barclay analysts Hale Holden and Danish Agboatwala suggested on Wednesday that Slim could exercise his warrants giving the New York Times a modest cash inflow. It also opens the door, analysts wrote, for the Times to possibly refinance the note if Slim increased his stake in the company.
Shares of the Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) were trading down in the early afternoon 2.2% to $10.55.
You’re a real Slim wit man...
All the newspapers that have reported Q4 results posted lower revenues.
All of them.
And January was not strong, according to the buzz. They will continue to wither and shrink.
There is nothing they can do about it.
Nothing at all.
You forgot the < /dylan > tag...
Uncle Charlie... he disowned me for associating with guys who blew up lemons on their heads.
I met that guy. A lemon bigot as I recall.
A real turd... hated garmmar and spelling police...
Grammar... sheesh, one bottle of wine and watching “Blazing Saddles” makes me a moron.
I just un-friended him on Facebook.
A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, Volume I to 1933
Erick Barnouw
Oxford University Press, New York, 1966
Introduction
Pg 3
Every medium of information has made names and meanwhile, values. New media have meant new values. Since the dawn of history, each new medium has tended to undermine an old monopoly, shift the definitions of goodness and greatness, and alter the climate of mens lives.
In ancient Egypt, the transition from stone as in the pyramids to papyrus as transmitter of truth, prestige, and doctrine seems to have brought on or encouraged many other changes. Because papyrus was portable, it helped rulers exercise authority over wide areas. But the power now had to be shared with armies of copyists, and the literate became a privileged class. Because papyrus was scarce, control of its production became crucial, and again this meant a sharing of royal power, in this case the managers of productivity. All this meant a shift away from absolute monarchy, a dispersal of authority, that is said to have penetrated deeply into Egyptian life. Papyrus begat bureaucracy.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the arrival of paper in Europe began to undermine a church monopoly of knowledge, which had been based on the scarcity of parchment and on the skills of monastery copyists. Ample supplies of paper now encouraged the development of printing, and spread written communications to new fields and ideas. It became an instrument in the growth of trade, the rise of the vernacular, and the spread of heretical ideas via tract, story and image. It reinforced the rise of merchant, lawyer, explorer, scientist. The chain reactions echoed through centuries.
(The author cites the following reference: Empire and Communications by Harold A. Innis, Oxford University Press, 1950)
great piece...... the flow of change continues.
Time will tell if slim is going with the flow or trying to resist.
The internet and world wide web will take its place alongside the written word, the invention of paper, Gutenberg’s movable type, and electronic information distribution (radio, TV) as historic change agents of mankind.
“They” can no more stop it than they can the tides or the seasons of the year.
Algore's amazing invention is really the first time in history media barons have faced a perfect market (i.e. one with true competition) -- and it's eating them alive.
Moreover, they are losing their position of power and authority -- and the repression and oppression -- they inevitably exert. And they don't like it.
We live in an interesting time.
Which is the point the author makes. Throughout history the significant changes in human communications technology causes "The Man" to lose power.
My favorite example is when Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses to the church door. Pope Leo X threw a fit, but to no avail.
The invention of movable type and the availability of paper allowed the idea to spread.
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