Final KR ‘Orphan’ Sold to Former Publisher

Yep, it’s done…over. McClatchy has agreed to sell The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to the paper’s former publisher Richard Connor…Connor has teamed up with a group of investors including the Dallas-based HM Capital Partners to form Wilkes-Barre Publishing Co. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
AP: The deal will keep Wilkes-Barre, a northeastern Pennsylvania city of about 40,000, as a two-newspaper town. Times Leader employees had worried that the newspaper would be sold to the parent company of The Citizens’ Voice, a rival daily.
Staci: McClatchy will get a total $2.1 billion from the the dozen Knight Ridder papers brokered as it acquires the chain — and will use the money to pay its $.5 billion bill for the larger company. In the process, McClatchy managed to average a higher multiple than it is paying for KR: 11 times the trailing on-year cash flow compared to 9.5 times for the acquisition.

Comments have been disabled for this post