Saturday, April 18, 2009

Zell admits ‘mistake’ in TribCo purchase

Zell admits ‘mistake’ in TribCo purchase

By:
Lorene Yue April 15, 2009 Crain’s Chicago Business

(Crain’s) —
Sam Zell admits that taking over Tribune Co. hasn’t gone according to plan and was a “mistake.”

“The definition if you bought something and it’s now worth a great deal less, you made a mistake,” he told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday. “And I’m more than willing to say I made a mistake. I was too optimistic in terms of the newspaper’s ability to preserve its position.”

The Chicago billionaire, who made his fortune from commercial real estate, was instrumental in taking the parent of the
Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times private through a complex deal that saddled it with $13 billion in debt. Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December, a move Mr. Zell said in Wednesday’s interview was necessary to “stop the bleeding and preserve a great company.”

The process that Mr. Zell used to take Tribune private caught the attention recently of the U.S. Department of Labor, which last month subpoenaed the company for documents related to its Employees Stock Ownership Plan, now the sole owner of
Tribune Co.

Read the rest here: Zell admits ‘mistake’ in TribCo purchase

(20071028 Tribune, Patuxent Publishing Group, Baltimore Sun disclosure Kevin Dayhoff writes for three of the newspapers in the Patuxent Publishing Group, the Sunday Carroll Eagle, Westminster Eagle and Eldersburg Eagle. The Patuxent Publishing Group is owned by “Tribune.” Tribune also owns the Baltimore Sun – and as a matter of fact, the Sunday Carroll Eagle is distributed in the Sunday edition of the Baltimore Sun – see: 20071021 Baltimore Sun: “To our readers.”) Additionally I write for an online magazine, The Tentacle.)

20090415 Zell admits mistake in TribCo purchase by Lorene Yue
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=33701
Kevin Dayhoff Art: www.kevindayhoff.com (http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/)

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