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mahatmakanejeeves

(60,922 posts)
Sat Dec 18, 2021, 11:20 AM Dec 2021

Alden sues Lee after news publisher rejects its takeover bid

Business

Alden sues Lee after news publisher rejects its takeover bid

By Josh Funk | AP
Yesterday at 10:48 a.m. EST

The Alden Global Capital hedge fund stepped up its attempts to buy Lee Enterprises this week, filing a lawsuit that accuses its board of denying shareholders of the newspaper publisher a voice in the matter. ... The publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Buffalo News and dozens of other newspapers rejected Alden's offer to buy the company for $24 a share, or roughly $141 million, last Thursday calling the bid, “grossly undervalued.”

Alden argued in the lawsuit filed Wednesday that Lee shouldn’t have rejected its offer without even talking to the hedge fund. Alden also said Lee shouldn’t have refused to accept its nomination of three outside directors for technical reasons and has asked the court to order Lee to accept those nominees.

{snip}

The New York hedge fund that owns 6.3% of Lee’s stock became one of the largest newspaper owners in the nation after swallowing all of Tribune’s newspapers earlier this year, but it has a history of imposing severe cost cuts and layoffs at newspapers.

{snip}

Lee publishes nearly every daily newspaper in Nebraska in addition to those in St. Louis and Buffalo. Unions that represent journalists at those papers have come out strongly against Alden. ... Alden has bought up roughly 200 publications across the country in recent years through a series of acquisitions. Besides the Tribune papers, Alden also owns the Denver Post, Orange County Register and Boston Herald.
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Alden sues Lee after news publisher rejects its takeover bid (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Dec 2021 OP
So it looks like newspapers will soon be a duopoly of Gannet and Alden rurallib Dec 2021 #1

rurallib

(63,196 posts)
1. So it looks like newspapers will soon be a duopoly of Gannet and Alden
Sat Dec 18, 2021, 11:57 AM
Dec 2021

Neither of which are worth a crap.

Soon we will have the news diversity of the old Soviet Union days of Tass and Izvestia.
Add in the near monopolies in radio and TV news and it all adds up to a news wasteland.

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