Times Up?
Morgan Stanley has dumped every, single share of the New York Times that it owned. 10 million shares or a 7.3% stake of the Times. Share prices plummeted to the lowest level in ten years.
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a person briefed on the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years.
The person declined to be identified because Morgan Stanley hasn't made the sale public yet. Traders with knowledge of the transaction said Merrill Lynch & Co. brokered a $183 million block trade of 10 million New York Times shares this morning.
Hassan Elmasry, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, unsuccessfully challenged the Sulzberger family's control of New York Times Co. through super-voting stock that gives them a board majority. Shareholders owning 42 percent of the company, parent of the namesake newspaper and Boston Globe, withheld support for directors at the publisher's April annual meeting.
“This guy has been speaking for a lot of people who are too discreet to speak up and challenge management,'' said Porter Bibb, a managing partner at Mediatech Capital Partners LLC in New York and a former New York Times Co. executive.
New York Times shares slid 54 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $18.37 at 2:51 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and fell as low as $18.24, a level not seen since January 1997.
That is one rousing vote of no confidence in the Times or its management. The story goes on to describe how badly many of the big newspapers are doing right now. It is very badly, indeed.
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Times Fall Apart — Thursday, 18 October , 2007 @ 7:15 pm
By Mwalimu Daudi, Wednesday, 17 October , 2007 @ 4:47 pm
If the Berlin Wall can come down, so can the New York Times.
By sam, Thursday, 18 October , 2007 @ 3:42 pm
How much longer will they deteriorate before the current management gets the axe and someone comes in to clean up the problem? I’m guessing at least a year.