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Hollinger International
built 383 days ago
As Conrad Black prepared to address shareholders at Hollinger International's annual meeting in May 1996, the company was under two credit reviews for having too much debt. Both the U.S.-based Standard & Poor's Corporation and Canada's Dominion Bond Rating Service put Hollinger International on credit watch. Standard & Poor said that a downgrade was inevitable "in the absence of Hollinger taking significant steps to ease its debt burden." The company had about $445 million of debt outstanding, plus debt it had taken on to increase its stake in Southam and debt it might take on to complete its purchase of the Telegraph. Moody's debt-rating service soon followed with an announcement that it, too, was reviewing its rating of Hollinger's debt. At the time, Hollinger International was the third largest newspaper chain in the world behind Gannett Co. Inc. and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
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Black and Radler are now felons facing prison and Hollinger International is the Sun-Times Media Group, a wisp of its former self. Thompson said on WBBM that Black and Radler deceived him. He joined their board in 1994, and they deceived him until 2003, when some minority shareholders made a stink. For almost a decade Black and Radler deceived a guy who back in the day had such a sharp nose for malefactors that he was U.S. attorney. Black knows how to charm and impress, but as audit committee chairman Thompson dealt mostly with Radler, whose personal style is generally described as toxic. Yet he deceived Thompson; it never occurred to him that Radler might not be totally on the up and up.
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By the end of 1997, Hollinger International owned or had an interest in 167 paid daily newspapers. Its major newspapers were the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Ottawa Citizen. It ... owned or had an interest in 361 non-daily newspapers as well as other magazines and publications. For the past ten years, the company had pursued a strategy of growth through acquisitions. Since 1986, the company had acquired some 400 newspapers and other publications (net of those sold) in the United States, the Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom, the Jerusalem Post in Israel, and had made significant investments in newspapers in Canada, including a controlling interest in Southam Inc., Canada's largest newspaper publisher. In 1997, it acquired the Canadian Newspapers division of its parent company, Hollinger, Inc.
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In the wake of a Hollinger International shareholders meeting in New York in 2002, Conrad Black found himself on the defensive. Concerns had erupted at the meeting over millions of dollars in payments he and other company officers had received from the sale of Hollinger newspapers. Afterwards, Black allegedly emailed the company's investor relations officer, Paul Healey, asking him to do his part "stamping out" the notion that their actions had hurt the value of the company's stock. "Two years from now, no one will remember any of this," he wrote. The statement, outlined in evidence prosecutors plan to present when Black goes to trial on March 14 over accusations he looted Hollinger International, surely falls into that unfortunate category of famous last words.
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Black and Hollinger International swapped apartments in late December 2000, and Black paid the balance in cash. Hollinger's real estate lawyer, Martin Richman, raised no concerns about the sale price, according to Healy. But had not Manhattan real estate appreciated considerably during the years the company owned the apartment? Was Black receiving credit for the millions he'd spent on renovations? Or didhe and Boultbee use their influence at Hollinger to let Black purchase the apartment at a fraction of its actual value? Such questions are at the heart of the perks-related fraud count.
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Sun-Times Media Group, formerly known as Hollinger International Inc., is dedicated to being the premier source of local news and information for the greater Chicago area. Its media properties include the Chicago Sun-Times and Suntimes.com as well as newspapers and websites serving 120 communities across Chicago. Further information can be found at http://www.thesuntimesgroup.com .
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