Harbinger Capital fund sets its sights on the NY Times

Posted Jan 27th 2008 10:10AM by Zack Miller
Filed under: SEC Filings, Newspapers, New York Times'A' (NYT)

The newspaper industry has been struggling of late, battling online classified sites, job listings, and free blogs. While readership of offline paper has been steadily decreasing, readers have been drawn more and more to the online versions of newspapers.

Last Thursday, Reuters published the results of a recent study from the Newspaper Association of America reporting the number of unique visitors to newspaper websites last year rose more than 6% to a monthly average of 60 million.

So, it's not surprising to see that one hedge fund in particular is reported to be readying itself for a proxy battle to make a move for the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT). Marketwatch reports that the New York Times has said that Harbinger Capital Partners Master Fund has recently informed them of plans to seek seats on their board.

According to the article, Harbinger said it would nominate four Class A directors for election at New York Times Co.'s annual meeting on April 22.

The New York Times will not go down without a fight and in fact, has two classes of shares with differing voting power, enabling its owners to fend off this type of attempt. That said, with enough capital, energy, and sheer noise, Harbinger may be on to something.

Look, Rupert Murdoch was able to snatch the venerable Dow Jones. The New York Times may be ripe for a change.

Zack Miller is the Managing Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund.

Tags: harbinger, inthenews, new york times, newspaper, nyt, proxy, takeover