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Tribune Company
Samuel Zell is the CEO of Tribune Company. The Tribune Company is a leading US newspaper publisher which also has a strong presence in broadcast television.
In publishing, Tribune operates 11 leading daily newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Spanish-language Hoy Chicago. The company’s broadcasting group operates over 20 television stations, Superstation WGN on cable television, Chicago’s WGN-AM and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
The Chicago Tribune was founded in 1847 as the Daily Tribune, and in 1858 it merged with the Democratic Press as the Chicago Daily Press & Tribune. In 1861 the paper became the Chicago Tribune.
Chicago's WGN Radio (720 AM) went on the air in 1924, its call letters reflecting the Chicago Tribune's slogan, "World's Greatest Newspaper."
Tribune acquired the Times Mirror Company, including the Los Angeles Times newspaper, in June of 2000 for $8.3 billion. The company holds a 25% stake in Topix.net, an automated online news aggregation service, which it acquired in March 2005. At the same time, Gannett and Knight-Ridder each acquired 25% of Topix.net.
In 2004, the Tribune Company had sales of $5.7 billion.
Until December 2007, Tribune was a public company (NYSE: TRB). On April 2, 2007, Chicago-based real estate investor Sam Zell announced plans to take the company private at a price of $34.00 a share, totalling $8.2 billion. In August 2007 the deal was approved by 97% of the company's shareholders. The company went private on December 20, 2007 and Tribune Company stock stopped trading at the close of the market that day.
Under the Zell plan, Tribune bought out the public shareholders and then become a Subchapter S corporation, which pays no corporate income tax but passes all taxable income through to shareholders. The sole shareholder of the company then became an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), which also pays no taxes. This leaves a large amount of cash, which otherwise would have been used to pay taxes, to pay down debt. Zell invested $315 million in the deal.
Born in September 1941, Sam Zell is an American billionaire and real estate entrepreneur. He co-founded and is the Chairman of Equity Group Investments, LLc, a private investment firm. His net worth is estimated at about $6 billion. Zell became chairman and CEO of Tribune Company in December 2007 upon the completion of the privatization of the company.
Faced with declining revenues and profits, on March 13, 2008 the Tribune Company sold the Long Island newspaper Newsday and free New York City newspaper am New York to Cablevision Systems Corporation for $650 million.
Media SubsidiariesOther Tribune Company Properties
Brass Ring
CareerBuilder (partial ownership)
Chicago Cubs baseball team
Digital City (partial ownership)
Topix.net (partial ownership)
Tribune Direct
Tribune Media Services
Zap2it.com
Comments about Tribune CompanyComments to date: 4. The most recent comments are below.| |
Media Owners editors Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 7:54pm on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | Sam Zell says 'I made a mistake' in the Tribune deal, the Chicago Tribune reported on April 15, 2009:
"Tribune Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Zell told Bloomberg Television today that his heavily leveraged 2007 acquisition of the Chicago Tribune parent was "a mistake" in that he did not anticipate the steep decline in the newspaper business.
"By definition, if you bought something and it's now worth a great deal less, you made a mistake and I'm more than willing to say I made a mistake," Zell said. "I was too optimistic in terms of the newspaper's ability to preserve its position."
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Media Owners editors Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 7:53pm on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | Sam Zell could lose control of the Tribune Company, Michael Oneal of the Chicago Tribune reported on June 8, 2009:
"Chicago-based Tribune Co. and its creditors are in the early stages of negotiating a plan of reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that sources said likely would transfer control of the troubled media conglomerate from Chicago billionaire Sam Zell to a group of large banks and investors that hold $8.6 billion in senior debt.
The plan is still in its infancy, these sources said, and much could change as negotiations continue.
But the general shape of a new capital structure is coming into focus, and it centers on a debt-for-equity swap that probably would give the senior lenders a large majority ownership stake in the reorganized company.
A source with knowledge of the situation said the plan probably would wipe out a $90 million warrant Zell negotiated as part of his $8.2 billion deal to take the company private in 2007. The warrant gives the Tribune Co. chairman the right to buy 40 percent of the company for $500 million and is the basis of his control over Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune.
Zell also holds a $250 million note representing a loan he made to the company as part of the going-private transaction. That note, however, is near the bottom of the hierarchy of claims in Tribune Co.'s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, and the source said it is unlikely it would retain any value as the capital reorganization proceeds."
The full story:
www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-mon-tribune-0608-jun08,0,5886810.story
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Eric Kallgren Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 9:18pm on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 | Sam Zell says he made a mistake in acquiring the Tribune Company in 2007, the Chicago Tribune reported on April 15, 2009:
"Tribune Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Zell told Bloomberg Television today that his heavily leveraged 2007 acquisition of the Chicago Tribune parent was "a mistake" in that he did not anticipate the steep decline in the newspaper business.
"By definition, if you bought something and it's now worth a great deal less, you made a mistake and I'm more than willing to say I made a mistake," Zell said. "I was too optimistic in terms of the newspaper's ability to preserve its position."
Zell, who took Tribune Co. private in a leveraged $8.2 billion deal, reiterated that his goal is to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings begun in December to manage its $13 billion in debt with its assets intact. But the billionaire investor also said the company is looking at "all options."
"It's very obvious that the newspaper model in its current form does not work and the sooner we all acknowledge that the better," Zell said. "Whether it be home delivery, whether it be giving content away for free -- these are critical issues.
"We are seriously looking at everything because in effect the future of the newspaper industry is at risk today," he said, when pressed on the possibility of cutting back on delivery and print in favor of a greater role for digital publication."
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Eric Kallgren Boulder, Colorado USA | Posted at 2:56pm on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | On December 8, 2008, the Associated Press reported that the Tribune Company has filed for bankruptcy protection:
Tribune Co. files for bankruptcy
By VINNEE TONG and ANICK JESDANUN
NEW YORK (AP) — Tribune Co. — owner of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and other dailies — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday, the first major newspaper publisher to take such a step since the Internet plunged the industry into a desperate struggle for survival.
The media conglomerate was smothered by a drop-off in advertising and a crushing $13 billion in debt from the company's takeover a year ago by Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell.
Chapter 11 would buy the Tribune Co. time to put its finances in order. Analysts said the company will almost certainly have to sell off some of its major holdings — and that could prove extremely difficult because of the bad economy and the poor outlook for newspapers.
"When you look at the near term, prospects for the company and the industry are certainly not very bright," said Dave Novosel, an analyst with the Gimme Credit research firm.
Tribune Co. employees, who received an ownership stake in the company when Zell came in, could also see the value of their holdings wiped out.
Tribune Co., which has 20,000 employees, owns baseball's Chicago Cubs as well as 10 daily newspapers, including The Hartford (Conn.) Courant and the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, cable channels and 23 TV stations. Its papers' total circulation puts the Tribune Co. among the top three most-read newspaper groups nationwide.
In filing for bankruptcy, the company reported $13 billion in debt and $7.6 billion in assets.
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