| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front Economy |
| Sulzberger's Trying To Take The NYT Private |
| 2006-07-31 |
| The famous Sulzberger dynasty is quietly tightening its financial grip on the New York Times and the Boston Globe, a new analysis shows. And it’s using shareholders’ cash, instead of its own, to do it. A Herald examination of Times financial filings shows that since Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. took over as chairman in 1997, The New York Times Co. has bought up almost one-third of the stock held by outsiders. Meanwhile the Sulzbergers themselves have “basically held their shares,” says company spokeswoman Catherine Mathis. And so, without spending a dime, the storied newspaper dynasty has raised its stake to about 20 percent. “If you keep doing that over a period of years, at some point there’s only one shareholder left standing,” says Putnam fund manager Rich Cervone. “It’s a slow process of going private,” adds Lee Forker, president of New England Research & Management in Boston. The Times has spent $3 billion so far buying out shareholders. Total net income from 1997 through 2005: $2.85 billion... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #8 The famous Sulzberger dynasty is quietly tightening its financial grip on the New York Times Having a tight grip on a dead horse is not necessarily a good thing. |
| Posted by: Matt 2006-07-31 20:55 |
| #7 "The Times has spent $3 billion so far buying out shareholders. Total net income from 1997 through 2005: $2.85 billion." Hmmmmm. I think I see a problem here.... |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-07-31 20:49 |
| #6 If you're secure enough to hang on to your job, one strategy would be to drive the stock down and then take it private at the bottom for short money. |
| Posted by: KBK 2006-07-31 20:39 |
| #5 2b - it's mostly a negative cash flow problem. |
| Posted by: Raj 2006-07-31 20:33 |
| #4 don't know enough about stocks - but could it be that they've been buying their own stock to prevent shareholders from seeing that the value has been dropping for some time? If you own lots of stock and it's worth is starting to slip- wouldn't there be a benefit - to a point - of buying back your own stock to prevent the value from sliding further? Especially if you can use the stockholders own money to do it, as they claim in this article? I also wonder if this is article is just pure spin and whitewash. Rather than say that the stock has fallen dramatically in value, and would have fallen much further if Pinch hadn't bought so much of it back - they are making up this "going private" excuse so any remaining shareholders don't panic and create a fire sale. If their income is slipping, their shareholders are bailing, where will they get the money to run their operations? I'd suggest that the lesson here is that stockholders should bail while they still can. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-07-31 20:20 |
| #3 It's been bailing for a while. One of my clients owns shares; I told him to dump it last year, he's been thnking me ever since. |
| Posted by: Raj 2006-07-31 20:17 |
| #2 Sounds like the smart money is bailing. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-07-31 20:03 |
| #1 Pesky shareholders want you to make money, not waste it on moonbat crusades. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2006-07-31 19:31 |