A Swiss billionaire octogenarian who lives in Wyoming and has donated hundreds of millions to environmental causes is a surprising new player in the bidding for Tribune Publishing, the largest newspaper chain that until recently looked set to end up in the hands of a New York hedge fund.
Hansjörg Wyss (pronounced Hans-yorg Vees), the former chief executive of medical device manufacturer Synthes, said in an interview on Friday that he agreed to join Maryland hotelier Stewart W. Bainum Jr. in a offer by Tribune Publishing, an offer that could overturn Alden Global Capital’s plan to take full control of the company.
Wyss, who donated part of his fortune to help preserve wildlife habitats in Wyoming, Montana and Maine, said he was motivated to join the Tribune’s offer because he believed in the need for a robust press. “I have the opportunity to do 500 times more than I am doing now,” he said.
Alden, who already owns about 32 percent of the shares in Tribune Publishing, is known for drastically cutting the costs of the newspapers it controls through its subsidiary MediaNews Group. Last month, the hedge fund reached an agreement with Tribune, whose newspapers include The Daily News, The Baltimore Sun and The Chicago Tribune, to buy the rest of the company’s stock for $ 17.25 each.
Under that plan, Bainum, a Maryland veteran, agreed to establish a nonprofit group that would buy The Sun and two other Maryland newspapers owned by the Alden Tribune for $ 65 million. Soon after that agreement was reached, however, negotiations between Mr. Bainum and Alden were halted. This prompted Bainum, president of Choice Hotels International, one of the largest hotel chains in the world, to make an offer on March 16 across the Tribune, beating Alden’s number with an offer of $ 18.50 per share.
That offer valued the company at about $ 650 million. The Alden deal valued Tribune at about $ 630 million.
Tribune was not influenced by Mr. Bainum’s offer. A bond deposit on Tuesday revealed that the company’s board recommended that shareholders approve Alden’s offer. At the same time, the Tribune board gave Bainum the go-ahead to seek funding for its highest bid.
He did just that by partnering with Wyss, who said in the interview that he planned to own the company’s main newspaper while he and Bainum were looking for benefactors for the Tribune’s seven other metropolitan newspapers, including The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant.
“He made this offer because he wants The Baltimore Sun,” said Wyss, referring to Bainum. “I said, ‘Yes, fine. And I have to make The Tribune even better than it is now. ‘”
The agreement signed by Wyss and Bainum is not binding, Wyss said. He added that this has happened in the past few days and is detailed in a letter he sent to Bainum on Friday. A person with knowledge of the discussions between Wyss and Bainum confirmed that each man planned to invest $ 100 million in the $ 650 million offer, and Wyss said he would be willing to provide additional funds to finance the debt.
Mr. Bainum declined to comment. A spokesman for three Tribune board members not affiliated with Alden declined to comment. A spokesman for Alden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A decade ago, Mr. Wyss led the sale of Synthes to Johnson & Johnson for about $ 20 billion. Wyss and his family – a daughter, Amy, also lives in Wyoming – had the largest stake in Synthes, owning almost half of the shares.
The sale of Tribune, which the news company hopes to complete by July, requires regulatory approval and positive votes from the company’s shareholders who represent two-thirds of the shares not owned by Alden. Medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns The Los Angeles Times with his wife, Michele B. Chan, has enough Tribune shares to destroy Alden’s business alone. Dr. Soon-Shiong declined to comment on Saturday.
Wyss said he would be the civic guardian of The Chicago Tribune. “I don’t want to see another newspaper that has a chance to increase the amount of truth being told to the American people going down the drain,” he said.
Alden’s potential acquisition of Tribune was fiercely contested by many journalists from Tribune newspapers. Alden aggressively cut costs for many MediaNews Group publications, including The Denver Post and The San Jose Mercury News. Critics say the hedge fund sacrifices journalistic quality for higher profits, while Alden argues that it saves newspapers that would otherwise join the thousands that have closed in the past two decades.
Wyss, 85, said he was partially inspired to join Bainum for a New York Times opinion essay last year, in which two Chicago Tribune reporters, David Jackson and Gary Marx, warned that a purchase of Alden would lead to ” a ghost version of The Chicago Tribune – a newspaper that can no longer fulfill its essential surveillance mission. ”Since the article appeared, the two reporters have left the newspaper.
Mr. Wyss, born in Bern, first visited the United States as an exchange student in 1958, working for the Colorado Department of Highway. He was a journalist as a young man, he said, covering skiing for Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a Zurich Newspaper, and filing dispatches on American sports to Der Bund, a Bern newspaper, when he was studying at Harvard Business School.
He said he believed the Chicago Tribune would prosper under his ownership.
“Maybe I’m naive,” said Wyss, “but the combination of giving enough money for a professional team to do the right things and putting a lot of money into digital will end up making it a very profitable newspaper.”