LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Samuel Zell: Companies
built 292 days ago
Samuel Zell, 65, has been Chairman of the Board of the Company since March 1993. Mr. Zell is the Chairman and President of EGI. Mr. Zell is ... Chairman of the Board of ELS, Capital Trust, Inc., Anixter International Inc. and Covanta Holding Corporation. Mr. Zell was also Chairman of the Board of EOP until its sale in February 2007.
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Source: In the Matter of Applications for Consent to the Transfer of Control of Tribune Company from Shareholders of Tribune Company to Samuel Zell (MB Docket 07-119) Petition to Deny at page 29. June 11, 2007. http://www.mediaaccess.org/filings/Tribune%20Petition%20to%20Deny.pdf
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Washington, D.C. -- Few details of the bid by Samuel Zell to buy the Tribune Company have been spelled out, other than the fact that an employee stock ownership plan will play a major part in the transaction. But this much is clear: The Newspaper Guild-CWA will do everything possible on behalf of union-represented workers at the properties and to look out for the interests of all 20,000 Tribune Company employees.
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[E]ven though Zell has the resources to weather the credit storm and go ahead with his planned purchase, the question remains whether he should. The Tribune Company’s operating problems are real and urgent, to the point that it’s considered good news when ad and circulation numbers drop less than they did last month, leaving alone any fantasies of actual growth. And the Trib’s challenges aren’t isolated. They affect the entire newspaper sector, which has seen consistent declines in profitability even for stalwarts like Gannett, McClatchy, and The New York Times Company. It may be that not even a canny operator like Zell can work his magic in a broken industry.
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Zell and Lurie formed Equity Finance and Management Company in 1968. They became involved in two small development projects but quickly decided that there were too many uncontrollable elements in building and that the risks simply outweighed the rewards. Zell concluded that much of a developer's compensation was psychological, the ability to point to a structure and declare that he had built it: "Look how big it is!" Instead Zell and Lurie decided to concentrate on acquiring existing properties at below replacement cost from distressed developers, a practice that would lead to Zell earning the nickname of the "Grave Dancer." One of their first deals of this kind involved a 1,000-unit apartment and office complex in downtown Cleveland. The property was in such poor shape that it was mostly inhabited by squatters.
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Financially, the most controversial part of Zell's bid is that it loads the company with an extraordinary amount of debt. He has offered $34 per share for the company, for a total of $8.2 billion, but only $315 million of that is his money. The remainder of the investment would be debt, and Zell would ... have to take on $5 billion in existing Tribune debt, pushing the total debt to about $13 billion, or 10 times the company's anticipated 2007 cash flow. The most highly leveraged newspaper companies operate at about five times cash flow.
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