Tomorrow is the day that the New York Times Co. has set to accept final offers to sell the Boston Globe. And Media Nation is picking up some well-informed buzz that things are not going well with either of the two prospective buyers — a group led by former Globe executive Stephen Taylor or Platinum Equity, owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Like any reader of the Globe, I have a rooting interest in this. I’d like to see the Taylors make a comeback. But even if they can pull this off, you have to wonder if they’ll be so under-capitalized that the cutting will resume almost immediately.
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Dan, would they really make the announcement on the Friday of a long holiday weekend? I thought that was the day to release news that you don’t want anyone to see. Are they somehow ashamed of the sale, the buyers, etc.?
Fish: No one knows what’s going on. (Well, OK. Someone does. Not me.) Today is the deadline to submit final bids. I suppose it would make sense that we’re not going to hear anything right away, because the Times Co. then has to analyze those bids. So I just don’t know. But it’s at least possible that we’ll hear something today.
If it were Warren Buffet or John Henry we’d hear today. They are the kind of people who make offers “that we’ll take it off your hands” or come to an agreement with a handshake.
Not the case here. The offer will not be simply a number written on one sheet of paper. The offer will be very complex overwhelmed with pages of boilerplate peppered with shrewd manipulations of adjustments, clauses, etc.