Chicago Tribune Company to buy off investors; to be privately held
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In a surprise announcement, Chicago Tribune Co. has announced that it will buy back stock from shareholders and return to a privately held company. The deal is being engineered by Chicago real estate billionaire tycoon Sam Zell who will be invest another $250 million and become a member of the board.
It is not clear how Zell will manage the company once he’s in control.
The New York Times reports: “Mr. Zell, 65, the son of refugees who fled Poland on the eve of Hitler’s invasion, is a self-made billionaire who has thrived on buying up distressed businesses. What he plans to do with Tribune is not clear. He has said he would leave current management in place and that his interest was not editorial but economic. Some employees fear that he could continue paring down the company, which has cut staff and costs over the last few years as its newspapers, along with many others, have lost readers and advertisers to the Internet.
Time will tell how this will affect editorial cartoonists who are employed by companies owned by the Tribune Co.
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