Morgan Stanley Doesn’t Think The New York Times Is A Good Investment Anymore

Ken McCracken • October 18, 2007

The investment group is selling off its 7.5% stake in the Times.

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 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. sold New York Times stock worth $183 million in a block trade.
Hassan Elmasry, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, has unsuccessfully challenged the Sulzberger family’s control of New York Times Co. through super- voting shares that give them control over the board. Shareholders owning 42 percent of the company, parent of the namesake newspaper and Boston Globe, withheld support from 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 48 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $18.43 at 12:44 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and fell as low as $18.28, a level not seen since January 1997.

This is probably the most significant change in the Times’ financial position to date, but it’s the continuation of a trend that goes back years.

Meanwhile, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post continue to thrive.

Tags: Media, Politics

http://Array Mark D

Show me another stock with sort of record of incompetent management, and I’ll show you another dog that no one in their right mind would own.

I got another one, Halliburton, over $25 then dubyas tax cut was put in place and it dropped bellow $5 talk about incompetent…..oh wait, Super Dubya to the rescue.
“Iraq has WMD’s…….ATTACK”

It’s a war stock, go figure

Thank you defense contracts

*Note: FY 2007 only includes up through second and part of third quarter.
Bat One

CFC, you can start with that one.

Mark,

You are not only ignorant, but a financial fool as well. Countrywide’s recent slide is nothing compared to that of the New York Times Company, nor is NYT’s Sulzburger in the same league in terms of management capability as Angelo Mozilo of CFC.

I did very nicely on the CFC stock I bought some 12 years ago and sold a couple years ago when interest rates hit bottom. I have since bought CFC again and I expect to do very handsomely again.

As for Halliburton, only a complete moron would equate that, or any defense-related stock’s performance to tax cuts. I only wish I had bought in earlier instead of waiting until halfway through 2003 to buy.
Dave

Not too surprising. Since the advent of blogs and such, people are less likely to desire “accuracy” and “fairness” in their reporting. As time passes, we’re going to see more and more biased media, as they will be the most successful.

Rob:

Meanwhile, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post continue to thrive.

Thank you for demonstrating my point.
Mark D

Bat

I have since bought CFC again and I expect to do very handsomely again.

Before or after the bankruptcy?
http://proof-proofpositive.blogspot.com/ proof_positive

The power of Say Anything: On one of the other posts here, I saw an ad for home delivery of the NYT!
Bat One

The real mystery about this Morgan Stanley sale of The New York Times stock today–the thing I don’t understand–is who was stupid enough to buy it from them?

-Economist Don Luskin, Trend Macro Chief Investment Officer and blogger, on last night’s Kudlow & Company TV program.
Pilgrim

Wouldn’t you like to have been a fly on the wall at the board meeting where THAT decision was made?

I wonder if the management of the NYT will get the message.

Nah. Nevermind.
Bat One

Dave,

Your “point” is rubbish, founded on your very own bias and ignorance. Especially as the subject, yours, is news reporting and not editorial positions.

While the NYT can’t hold a candle to the financial and business expertise of the WSJ, the national, international and political reporting of the Journal is no less liberal than that of the Times. As for Fox, I’d suggest you actually spend some time watching Shepard Smith’s news program, rather than castigating everything that says Fox simply to keep up with Pelosi, Reid, and Howard Dean. I’d be only to happy to review the same day’s program with you sometime and discuss whatever “rightwing” bias you can actually manage to discover.

Granted, you probably shudder at the thought of Bill O’Reilly. But in the first place his is not a news program (certainly no more so than Lou Dobbs’), and in the second there are very few instances when O’Reilly has a conservative commentator on without a liberal one as well. Likewise, Alan Colmes is every bit as much a pain in the ass for conservatives as Sean Hannity is for those of you on the left. In both cases, that’s a helluva lot more “fair and balanced” than anything CNN or MSNBC can muster.

The point is, there a decided difference between objective, fact-based news reporting and opinion or editorial presentation. Perhaps the problem here is that like most liberals you are simply incapable of making that distinction.
Mark D

Show me another stock with sort of record of incompetent management, and I’ll show you another dog that no one in their right mind would own.

CFC, you can start with that one.
Bat One

Could be MS was trimming some fat.

What an incredibly stupid remark! The sale is about minimizing a loss on an investment. The stock of the New York Times company has been on a downward slide toward oblivion since “Pinch” took control… from a high in the mid 50′s to this evening’s after hours trading in the $18.30s. Show me another stock with sort of record of incompetent management, and I’ll show you another dog that no one in their right mind would own.

By comparison, Rupert Murdock’s various properties have been doing just fine thank you.
Bat One

Before or after the bankruptcy?

Mark,

Perhaps your “town” has a restaurant of some sort? Atlanta has a little steak place named “Bones”. I’ll be glad to let you buy my dinner when that bankruptcy filing you mentioned doesn’t happen. Care to put your money where your mouth is? Or in this case, my mouth?
Mark D

Who buys newspapers anymore? It’s day old news.
Could be MS was trimming some fat.

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley, the world’s second- biggest securities firm, is eliminating about 300 jobs after third-quarter revenue from fixed-income fell 3 percent, said a person familiar with the decision.

Once all these liberal, American haters are gone then dubyas approval rating will go up, and Americans will once again see how robust the economy is and how the tax cuts really are working. Shoot Americans may even see how Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and Fox News will find those pesky WMDs once we get rid of CNN, CBS, ABC and all the other liars.
Haliburton? Oh they make snowboards, I thought I heard that name before, thanks Sean.
Look the dems started WW III……
“So I have told people that, if you are interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” ~~Bush~~ Pelosi said.
This has been a Fox news update
Bat One

Both D-J MarketWatch and WSJ are also reporting the sale. So is Fox News.

The stock was held by Morgan on behalf of some of its institutional clients and Dow-Jones reports it was purchased sometime in 1996. Hopefully, they didn’t take a loss on the sale

Of course as was reported earlier this year, chairman and publisher “Pinch” Sulzberger, the one who has run the paper and the holding company into the ground, has taken a petty and disdainful attitude toward other stockholders in general, and Morgan-Stanley in particular.

Frustrated that one of its fund manager has criticized his company’s performance, New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger has struck back at Morgan Stanley.

Sulzberger has recently put in a request to pull the majority of the Ochs-Sulzberger’s family assets, including its sake in the newspaper publisher worth about $640 million, from the bank, according to Fortune magazine. That story was also confirmed by Bloomberg News.

The scion of the newspaper’s family can certainly bank with whatever companies he chooses. This move, though, is silly. It looks spiteful and will only embolden his most vocal critic Hassan Elmasry, the London-based manager of Morgan Stanley’s American and Global Franchise Strategies fund.

Speculation now is that the Sulzburger family will be forced to take NYT company private. But financing such a move will be more than a little problematic, particularly with “Pinch” still at the helm of the company’s only asset.
http://www.willisms.com/ Zsa Zsa

I doubt very seriously the NYT’s will get the message.

SayAnythingBlog.com

Morgan Stanley Doesn’t Think The New York Times Is A Good Investment Anymore

Create a SAB Readerblog

Recent Comments