The Alden Global hedge fund offers the purchase of Tribune Publishing

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Tribune Publishing owns the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and the Baltimore Sun, among other local newspapers.

The hedge fund made a non-binding proposal to buy the company for $ 14.25 per share, according to a statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The potential deal represents an 11% premium over the company’s last closing price on Wednesday of $ 12.79.

“We believe that, as a private company, Tribune would be able to unlock significant strategic and financial value, which will allow us to … make an offer to acquire all of Tribune’s common shares that are not owned by Alden,” explains the coverage said the fund.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the offer.

In June, Alden took a third seat on Tribune Publishing’s board of directors in exchange for a parallel deal with the newspaper chain. The agreement prevents Alden from increasing its stake in the company until June 2021.

Alden currently has a 32% stake in Tribune, which he bought in November 2019. Alden has long been criticized for buying stakes in newspaper companies and then cutting jobs in newsrooms. It already owns approximately 200 newspapers through its majority stock of MediaNews Group, which includes the Denver Post, Mercury News and the Boston Herald.

Alden said in a letter to the Tribune Publishing board that she was willing to continue the deal immediately.

Tribune did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Alden has made a fortune destroying local news,” NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss said Thursday. “They form short-term business plans that reduce newsrooms to the bone … Our thousands of members will continue to fight for ownership of local news coverage funds.”

In a petition filed last December in the Tribune Publishing Tribune, hundreds of Tribune employees said Alden has a “well-documented history of extracting short-term profits from already reduced operations by reducing jobs in writing and denying fair wages and benefits.

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