Alden Global Capital

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Alden Global Capital I worked at Alden Global Capital full-time (More than 5 years). Pros. Pretty space, well stocked kitchen.Â Alden Global Capital Awards & Accolades. Let us know if we're missing any workplace or industry recognition â“ Add Awards. Work at Alden Global Capital? Share Your Experiences. Alden Global Capital Logo. Alden Global Capital. Star Very Dissatisfied. Star Dissatisfied. Alden Global Capital is an American hedge fund based in New York City, U.S.. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith. Its managing director is Heath Freeman. It owns 50.1% of MNG, which in turns "owns more than 50 daily newspapers throughout the United States.". Through its subsidiary Digital First Media, Alden owns newspapers including The Denver Post, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Boston Herald, The Mercury News of San Jose, the East Bay Times, and The Orange County Register. The company â” Journal Register Company acquired by Alden Global Capital. Related Hubs. Hub Name.Â This describes the type of investor this organization is (e.g. Angel, Fund of Funds, Venture Capital). Link to homepage. Organization's general phone number. Alden Global Capital LLC is an employee owned hedge fund sponsor. The firm primarily provides its services to pooled investment vehicles. It also manages separate client-focused portfolios.Â It seeks to invest opportunistically in event-driven strategies. The firm employs fundamental and technical analysis to create its portfolios. Alden Global Capital LLC was founded in 2007 and is based Alden Global Capital LLC is an employee owned hedge fund sponsor. The firm primarily provides its services to pooled investment vehicles. Alden Global Capital - Randall Smith assets under management (13F Holdings), latest news, 13D/G filings, and investor letters provided by Insider Monkey.Â With offices in New York City, Dallas, Houston, Dubai, London and Mumbai, Randall Smith's Alden Global Capital has grown to become a surprisingly big player in the media space, particularly in distressed newspaper companies. Distressed debt is another area of expertise for Alden Global, and Randall Smith's team also studies the emerging markets quite closely..

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Broad-Based Stakeholder Ownership in Journalism: Co-Ops, Esops, Blockchains
Broad-Based Stakeholder Ownership in Journalism: Co-ops, ESOPs, Blockchains Nathan Schneider University of Colorado Boulder Media Industries 7, no. 2 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mij.15031809.0007.203 This article presents a survey of broad-based stakeholder- ownership models for journalism. The models considered are forms of ownership by employees, associations, audiences, and blends of these. Some of the examples are so new that they have not been, and cannot yet be, comprehensively studied. Yet they bear unique promise for addressing the dual challenges of economic sustainability and perceived accountability that bedevil news media today. Such promise, however, does not guarantee success. While broad-based stakeholder ownership in the news business shows capacity for public accountability, as well as some promise for business sustainability, it is ill-equipped to compete in markets organized to favor investor owners with far greater capital access. Such ownership models, therefore, will likely require additional policy support in order to gain and maintain significant market share. This article benefited from substantive input from Joseph Blasi, Dave Boyle, Julia Cagé, Patrick Ferrucci, Katy Fetters, Michael Keeling, Douglas Kruse, Chris Mackin, Doug O’Brien, and anonymous reviewers, in addition to financial support through a Louis O. Kelso Fellowship from the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. Introduction: “Owners who will” On the first weekend of April 2018, the opinion section of the Denver Post went into open revolt against the paper’s owners. Under the headline “News 1 Matters,” the cover showed a 2013 photo of the newsroom staff with its departed members—the majority of those pictured, thanks to a series of layoffs—replaced with black silhouettes.
[Show full text]
Why Did Tribune Publishing Roll Over for This Hedge Fund? As a Matter of Corporate Governance, the Deal to Give Alden Global Two Board Seats Is Indefensible
& MENU LOGOUT SUBSCRIBE Home ∠ Joe Cahill On Business JOE CAHILL ON BUSINESS December 03, 2019 02:32 PM Why did Tribune Publishing roll over for this hedge fund? As a matter of corporate governance, the deal to give Alden Global two board seats is indefensible. JOE CAHILL " # On Business MORE % $ REPRINTS Kendall McCaugherty, Hall + Merrick Photographers Tribune Publishing directors wasted no time capitulating to an aggressive new shareholder with a record of eviscerating local newspapers. The publisher of the Chicago Tribune and eight other metropolitan daily newspapers yesterday announced an agreement to give hedge fund Alden Global Capital two seats on the Tribune Publishing board, which will expand to eight from six members. The deal came less than a month after Alden aGliates acquired former Tribune Publishing Chairman Michael Ferro's 25 percent stake and added another chunk of shares in private transactions, bringing its total holding to 32 percent of the company's stock. It's an extraordinarily generous concession to an investor that has done nothing for the company. Alden hasn't provided Tribune Publishing with additional equity capital, as Ferro did when he acquired his stake from the company in 2016. Alden bought shares from other investors, not the company. Tribune Publishing gets none of the $145.4 million Alden is shelling out. Yet Alden is getting an even sweeter deal than Tribune directors gave Ferro. Alden gets two seats, compared with only one for Ferro. In return, Alden promised—subject to certain conditions—not to buy more Tribune Publishing shares or mount a proxy Wght for seven months.
[Show full text]
Letter and Its Response on April 19, 2021
THE NEWSGUILD – CWA 501 3rd Street, NW, 6th floor, Washington, DC 20001 (202) 434-7177 Fax (202) 434-1472 newsguild.org May 4, 2021 VOTE AGAINST PROPOSAL #1 AT TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY – THE AGREEMENT AND PLAN OF MERGER WITH ALDEN GLOBAL CAPITAL Dear Tribune Publishing Shareholder: We urge you to VOTE AGAINST Proposal #1 at the special meeting of shareholders on May 21, 2021. The proposed acquisition by Alden Global Capital undervalues our company, and the board has undertaken a rush to judgment that is not in the interests of Tribune shareholders. Alden’s offer of $17.25 is not the highest possible offer. Numerous observers, including Tribune CEO Terry Jimenez, believe the company has greater value, and an investor is currently working to assemble a bid with a higher value. The fairness opinion given to the Special Committee of the Board of Directors by its financial adviser had skewed comparisons, not even considering asset sales by our own company. And in this context, we must obviously question why the board jumped the gun in scheduling such a quick shareholder vote. We are The NewsGuild–Communications Workers of America, and we represent over 20,000 employees in the news industry, including employees at the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, Allentown Morning Call, Virginian-Pilot, Orlando Sentinel, and several smaller papers in Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia. For over 80 years, we have fought for journalistic integrity and press freedom. Our members stand for journalism and organizations that create quality journalism, which is vital for political accountability and democratic governance at all levels.
[Show full text]
THE NEWSGUILD – CWA 501 3Rd Street, NW, 6Th Floor, Washington, DC 20001 (202) 434-7177 Fax (202) 434-1472 Newsguild.Org
THE NEWSGUILD – CWA 501 3rd Street, NW, 6th floor, Washington, DC 20001 (202) 434-7177 Fax (202) 434-1472 newsguild.org April 30, 2020 The Honorable Dick Durbin The Honorable Tammy Duckworth United States Senate United States Senate 711 Hart Senate Office Building 524 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Washington, D.C. 20510 Re: March 27, 2020 Letter from Heath Freeman, Alden Global Capital LLC Dear Senators Durbin and Duckworth: The NewsGuild-CWA would like to comment on the letter that Mr. Freeman wrote in response to your March 12, 2020 letter. Publicly available documents and news stories refute nearly every major claim in Freeman’s letter, which contains numerous distortions, misrepresentations, and patently false claims. Independent Journalism Mr. Freeman writes (¶ 2) that MNG Enterprises is “committed to ensuring communities across the country are served by robust, independently minded local journalism.” The fact that layoffs at MNG are twice the average in the news industry is a strange take on robust journalism and does not offer much comfort to those communities. Layoffs and furloughs have continued into the pandemic.1 NewsGuild-CWA takes issue with Freeman’s assertions of “independently minded local journalism” (¶ 3). One Colorado editor, Dave Krieger, was fired after publishing a column critical of Alden Global Capital on his own blog. At The Denver Post, opinion page editor Chuck Plunkett said he resigned because management wouldn’t let him keep publishing editorials critical of Alden’s impact on local news. Meanwhile, reporters in Kingston, NY, have been warned not to write about Alden.2 Mr.
[Show full text]
US Mainstream Media Index May 2021.Pdf
Mainstream Media Top Investors/Donors/Owners Ownership Type Medium Reach # estimated monthly (ranked by audience size) for ranking purposes 1 Wikipedia Google was the biggest funder in 2020 Non Profit Digital Only In July 2020, there were 1,700,000,000 along with Wojcicki Foundation 5B visitors to Wikipedia. (YouTube) Foundation while the largest BBC reports, via donor to its endowment is Arcadia, a Wikipedia, that the site charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and had on average in 2020, Peter Baldwin. Other major donors 1.7 billion unique visitors include Google.org, Amazon, Musk every month. SimilarWeb Foundation, George Soros, Craig reports over 5B monthly Newmark, Facebook and the late Jim visits for April 2021. Pacha. Wikipedia spends $55M/year on salaries and programs with a total of $112M in expenses in 2020 while all content is user-generated (free). 2 FOX Rupert Murdoch has a controlling Publicly Traded TV/digital site 2.6M in Jan. 2021. 3.6 833,000,000 interest in News Corp. million households – Average weekday prime Rupert Murdoch Executive Chairman, time news audience in News Corp, son Lachlan K. Murdoch, Co- 2020. Website visits in Chairman, News Corp, Executive Dec. 2020: FOX 332M. Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Fox Source: Adweek and Corporation, Executive Chairman, NOVA Press Gazette. However, Entertainment Group. Fox News is owned unique monthly views by the Fox Corporation, which is owned in are 113M in Dec. 2020. part by the Murdoch Family (39% share). It’s also important to point out that the same person with Fox News ownership, Rupert Murdoch, owns News Corp with the same 39% share, and News Corp owns the New York Post, HarperCollins, and the Wall Street Journal.
[Show full text]
Broad-Based Stakeholder Ownership in Journalism: Co-Ops, Esops, Blockchains
Media Industries 7.2 (2020) Broad-Based Stakeholder Ownership in Journalism: Co-ops, ESOPs, Blockchains Nathan Schneider1 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER nathan.schneider [AT] colorado.edu Abstract This article presents a survey of broad-based stakeholder-ownership models for journalism. The models considered are forms of ownership by employees, associations, audiences, and blends of these. Some of the examples are so new that they have not been, and cannot yet be, comprehensively studied. Yet they bear unique promise for addressing the dual challenges of economic sustainability and perceived accountability that bedevil news media today. Such promise, however, does not guarantee success. While broad-based stakeholder ownership in the news business shows capacity for public accountability, as well as some promise for business sustainability, it is ill-equipped to compete in markets organized to favor investor-owners with far greater capital access. Such ownership models, therefore, will likely require additional policy support to gain and maintain significant market share. Keywords: Journalism, Employee Ownership, Cooperative Business, Media Industry, Media History Introduction: “Owners Who Will” On the first weekend of April 2018, the opinion section of the Denver Post went into open revolt against the paper’s owners. Under the headline “News Matters,” the cover showed a 2013 photo of the newsroom staff with its departed members—the majority of those pic- tured, thanks to a series of layoffs—replaced with black silhouettes. A series of accompany- ing articles took aim at the alleged culprit: the paper’s owner, a private-equity fund with considerable news holdings called Alden Global Capital. Media Industries 7.2 (2020) “Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom,” the lead editorial explained.
[Show full text]
FACT SHEET: Alden Global Capital and the Destruction of Local News
FACT SHEET: Alden Global Capital and the Destruction of Local News Alden Global Capital controls the MediaNews Group – formerly known as Digital First Media – a chain that owns 100 local and regional papers, including the Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News, The Trentonian, Orange County Register, St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the Boston Herald. i Alden is known as a “vulture” hedge fund – a fund that buys distressed debt on a discount and then either converts it to equity upon bankruptcy or insists on full repayment, superseding the claims of workers, small creditors, and other stakeholders. Alden cobbled together the assets of the Journal Register Company and the Media News Group between 2009 and 2011 through stock purchases and conversion of debt to equity during bankruptcy. The MediaNews Group (MNG) is one of America’s largest local and regional news chains, but complete information on its ownership is hidden through layers of Alden’s offshore shell companies .ii Under Alden’s management, scores of MNG papers have been gutted, leaving only bare-bones staff to produce a shadow of previous coverage. Since Alden took over, staff at MNG newspapers has been cut by more than 66 percent. This pace is not sustainable.iii Research shows that communities with such diminished news coverage pay more for services (via an increase in municipal bond yields) and are at greater risk of political corruption. iv Alden has sold much of the real estate associated with the local newspapers using its subsidiary Twenty Lake Holdings LLC. v Because Alden and Twenty Lake are private companies, we cannot assess the terms of these real estate deals.
[Show full text]
A Replanting Strategy
SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 A Replanting Strategy Hundreds of newspapers are languishing in the hands of hedge funds and chains. It’s time to replant them with community nonprofit groups and mission-driven owners By Steven Waldman 1 A PART OF THE OPEN MARKETS INSTITUTE 1 Introduction The conversation about the crisis in local news has tended to focus on two solutions: helping create local news startups and supporting local newspapers still in existence. Each approach has limitations and promise. Birthing nonproft news organizations is critically important and valuable, but so far there are far too few (around 300), and their scale is small. Congress, on the other hand, has so far focused on helping existing newspapers as they often are the only source of information in a community. But as a long-term strategy that is misguided. These newspapers suffer not only from broken business models but from ownership structures that make it nearly impossible for them to endure or serve their communities well. More than 1,000 newspapers today are owned by hedge funds or private equity frms, accounting for more than half of the daily newspaper circulation in the country. They cannot and will not guide newspapers to a better future. And the problems are about to get worse: The economic decline caused by COVID-19 will accelerate local newspaper bankruptcies and consolidation. This next tidal wave will swamp not only papers owned by private equity funds but also well-intentioned family-owned chains. It’s time to ask another question: Could some of the 6,700 privately owned newspapers be transformed into more community-grounded institutions? Just as sickly plants can sometimes gain new life by being watered and repotted in healthier soil, could changing their ownership structures and sources of nourishment revive some dying newspapers? We need an ambitious strategy to replant for-proft newspapers into local 2 nonproft organizations and Public Beneft Corporations.
[Show full text]
Letter from Jon Schleuss to Alden Global Capital Re Pensions
THE NEWSGUILD – CWA 501 3rd Street, NW, 6th floor, Washington, DC 20001 (202) 434-7177 Fax (202) 434-1472 newsguild.org April 7, 2020 Randall Smith Chief of Investments Heath Freeman President Alden Global Capital LLC 885 Third Ave. New York, NY 10022 Dear Mr. Smith and Mr. Freeman: I am writing to ask that Alden Global Capital reimburse the pension funds of Digital First Media/ MNG Enterprises employees for underperformance the pension funds experienced during the period that Alden Global Capital invested the employees’ pension assets in its own funds. In the last several months, Alden Global Capital has drawn substantial attention for its actions at news company MNG Enterprises including numerous news articles, letters from elected officials, city council resolutions, and a federal investigation. In April 2019, the Washington Post reported that Alden Global Capital, which owns MNG Enterprises and its subsidiary newspapers, such as the Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News , took the unusual step in 2013 of investing nearly $250 million in assets from MNG Enterprises employees’ pensions into hedge funds that Alden controlled. 1 As the Post and other sources have noted, Alden’s actions with regard to MNG Enterprises employees’ pensions raise a number of concerns and may have run afoul of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Federal law requires that employee pensions be invested solely for the benefit of retirees and not in a way that could benefit the pension managers themselves. In addition, ERISA also requires that managers of pension funds exercise prudence in their investments, including by diversifying a pension fund’s investments.
[Show full text]
Testimony Submitted for the Record
Testimony Submitted for the Record U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Hearing: “America for Sale? An Examination of the Practices of Private Funds” November 19, 2019 Bernie Lunzer, President, NewsGuild-CWA Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member McHenry: Thank you for the opportunity to offer written testimony. My name is Bernie Lunzer. I am President of The NewsGuild-CWA. The NewsGuild represents over 20,000 employees in the news industry. CWA represents working men and women in telecommunications, customer service, media, airlines, health care, public service and education, and manufacturing. I want to testify here on the role of private equity in the news industry. In particular, I want to discuss one newspaper chain, MediaNews Group (MNG) which is also known as Digital First Media. This is a newspaper company with such venerable titles as the Boston Herald, the Denver Post, the Detroit News, the Orange County Register, the San Jose Mercury News, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. MNG is controlled by the Alden Global Capital which is both a private equity firm and a hedge fund. The NewsGuild-CWA represents 500 workers at 13 MNG papers. Alden has played a particularly destructive role in local journalism. Since it has controlled MNG, it has slashed staff and sold real estate to extract cash from the news organizations without regard to the role news organizations play in communities. Alden has depleted newsrooms, eliminated beats, and made it virtually impossible for local papers to tell fully the stories of their communities.1 Alden has also extracted hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from its newspaper holdings to invest in unrelated businesses, some of which have gone belly-up.
[Show full text]
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Amicus
Case 20-2789, Document 279, 11/02/2020, 2965950, Page1 of 42 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT No. 20-2789(L) No. 20-3177 (XAP) UNIFORMED FIRE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION, UNIFORMED FIREFIGHTERS ASSOCIATION OF GREATER NEW YORK, POLICE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, INC., (Caption continued on inside cover) On appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 20-CV-05441-KPF BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND 31 NEWS MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS IN SUPPORT OF INTERVENOR-DEFENDANT-APPELLEE-CROSS-APPELLANT AND URGING AFFIRMANCE IN PART AND REVERSAL IN PART Katie Townsend Counsel of Record Bruce D. Brown THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 1156 15th St. NW, Suite 1020 Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 795-9300 Fax: (202) 795-9310 [email protected] Case 20-2789, Document 279, 11/02/2020, 2965950, Page2 of 42 CORRECTION OFFICERS’ BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, INC., SERGEANTS BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION, LIEUTENANTS BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION, CAPTAINS ENDOWMENT ASSOCIATION, DETECTIVES’ ENDOWMENT ASSOCIATION, Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees, v. BILL DE BLASIO, in his official capacity as Mayor of the City of New York, CITY OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT, DANIEL A. NIGRO, in his official capacity as the Commissioner of the Fire Department of the City of New York, NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, CYNTHIA BRANN, in her official capacity as the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections, DERMOT F. SHEA, in his Official Capacity as the Commissioner of the New York City Police Department, NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, FREDERICK DAVIE, in his Official Capacity as the Chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, CIVILIAN COMPLAINT REVIEW BOARD, Defendants-Appellees, COMMUNITIES UNITED FOR POLICE REFORM, Intervenor-Defendant-Appellee- Cross-Appellant.
[Show full text]
The Expanding News Desert
THE EXPANDING NEWS DESERT PENELOPE MUSE ABERNATHY Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics The Expanding News Desert | 1 THE EXPANDING NEWS DESERT By Penelope Muse Abernathy, Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics The Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media School of Media and Journalism University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill © 2018 Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press 11 South Boundary Street Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808 uncpress.org 4 | The Expanding News Desert CONTENTS Preface 7 The Loss of Local News: What it Means for Communities 11 The Loss of Newspapers and Readers 14 The Rise of the Ghost Newspaper: 28 Bigger and Bigger They Grow 34 Filling the Local News Void 42 The Challenges and Opportunities That Remain 50 The Enduring Legacy of the New Media Barons: How Private Equity and Hedge Funds Changed Newspapers 63 New Media/GateHouse 68 Digital First Media 72 CNHI 76 tronc/Tribune 79 BH Media Group 82 Civitas Media 85 10/13 Communications 87 Methodology 99 Contributors 105 The Expanding News Desert | 5 6 | The Expanding News Desert PREFACE From our very beginnings as a nation, newspapers have played a vital role in building community. Strong newspapers fostered a sense of geographic identity and in the process nurtured social cohesion and grassroots political activism. The stories and editorials they published helped set the agenda for debate of important issues, influence the policy and political decisions we made, and build trust in our institutions.
[Show full text]