MEDIA DESTRUCTION WATCH….Felix Salmon reports that the latest auction of defaulted Tribune Company bonds produced dismal results:
Much more startling is the price on the senior secured loans: just 23.75 cents on the dollar. I checked in with Nishul Saperia at Markit, and he said that it was the lowest recovery rate he’d ever seen for a secured loan….
I should imagine that today’s news has been greeted with a shudder at the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and other Tribune properties: clearly no one on Wall Street thinks they’re worth much even without the huge pile of debt that Sam Zell loaded onto their fragile shoulders. Is David Geffen still interested in buying an uneconomic trophy property? He could turn out to be many employees’ final hope.
I wonder how much longer I’ll be getting a newspaper delivered to my driveway each morning?