Not everyone is discounting the value of great newspapers. Take Scott Galloway for instance. He’s leading the fight for a board position at the New York Times after Firebrand/Harbinger LLC, a company created for this offensive, disclosed a 4.9% stake in the capital of the NY Times Company. His pitch : creating more value for shareholders (the usual crap) by a “redeployment of capital to expedite the acquisition of digital assets.” according to the letter sent to Arthur Sulzberger chairman and publisher of the Times and Janet Robinson k the CEO. The fall of the New York Times stock (from $47 to $18 since 2004), shows a true erosion of the “value for shareholders” and it makes the media group tempting for investors such as Firebrand/Harbinger ‘even though the family-controlled board shields the management from outside interference’.
> Read the letter from Gallaway, filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A monument of takeover-era rhetoric.
> And the profile of Scott Galloway in Portfolio magazine
> Forbes magazine is detailing the achievements of hedge funds manager Philip Falcone. Not exactly the kind of guy you want at your board for the kind of complicated turnaround the Times is facing.
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