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Union helps in bid for 12 newspapers
Associated Press
Published March 24, 2006
NEW YORK - An investment firm working with a union of newspaper employees plans to submit a bid for all 12 newspapers the McClatchy Co. is selling as part of its acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc., an adviser for the firm said Thursday.
The Yucaipa Cos., an investment firm run by California billionaire Ron Burkle, will make a bid for all 12 papers, which include the San Jose Mercury News, the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota, the adviser, Robert Hall, said.
Hall is a former publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, two of the papers that McClatchy plans to sell. McClatchy said the 12 papers don't meet its investment criteria, which require that newspapers be in rapidly growing cities.
Yucaipa has been working with the Newspaper Guild-CWA, which represents employees at most of the 12 papers being sold. Yucaipa has also worked in forging deals in the supermarket business.
Hall declined to say how much the group might bid for the papers. Analysts have estimated that McClatchy could get at least $1.4-billion for them.
Other parties are thought to be interested in several of the papers, including industry leader Gannett Co. and MediaNews Group Inc., a private publishing company in Denver.
Gannett's CEO Craig Dubow said in an analyst presentation Thursday that the company was taking a look at the 12 papers up for sale, but he declined to say which ones. He also noted there would be regulatory and other hurdles in the way. MediaNews didn't return a call seeking comment.
McClatchy said this week that there has been high interest in the papers, and that it was likely that the 12 papers would be bought by different parties. McClatchy declined to comment Thursday on Yucaipa's interest.
McClatchy plans to keep 20 of Knight Ridder's 32 newspapers as part of its deal to acquire the San Jose, Calif.-based company for $4.5 billion in cash and stock, plus about $2 billion in assumed debt.
[Last modified March 24, 2006, 02:15:43]
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