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NY Times may take 90 percent haircut on sale of the Globe
TFA (as well as other news articles about the pending requests for bids) dances around the fact that the buyer will automatically lose the value of his/her bid because of its pension liabilities, if the $100 million figure is accurate. Helluva a way to run a newspaper, if you ask me.

It used to be shameful to ask buyers of an entity to take such a severe screwing in a proposed purchase. There used to be a concept in business in which even if you stand to lose money in a deal, the least you can do is to walk away with cash and the buyer with a sense he/she received something of value.

My brain used to be good at this, but I am having a hard time with what it is called.

Now I remember: profit.

Seems to me the NY Times would be better off just auctioning off what little value remains in the fixed assets and tell the union to find some other entity to wreck.

From TFA:

The New England Media Group, the division that manages the Globe, has about $110 million in pension liabilities, according to two of the people familiar with the matter. Times Co. would prefer cash to help offset the liabilities rather than bids that assume even part of them, one of the people said. Such bids would be less attractive because in the event a new owner of the Globe were to become insolvent, the Globe's pension liabilities would revert back to Times Co., the people said.
Pretty funny. If your business is worth 11 times less than what it was 20 years ago, you ARE insolvent!
Posted by: badanov 2013-06-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=371188