In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, McCormick Media investors said they agreed to buy Ferro’s 25.7 percent stake in Tronc because it “represented an attractive investment opportunity” and they may increase or decrease their position in the company.
McCormick Media investors “are engaging in discussions with one or more significant stockholders” of Tronc to see if “such stockholders may desire to potentially engage in any such actions on a cooperative basis,” the filing stated.
On April 13, McCormick Media agreed to buy Ferro’s more than 9 million shares for $23 per share, or $208.6 million. That would give McCormick Media the largest stake in the former Tribune Publishing Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun and other major daily newspapers.
McCormick Media intends to finance the purchase of Ferro’s shares through funding from an unnamed related entity, according to Monday’s SEC filing.
The nascent company is headed by Sargent Collier, a distant relative of the family that built the Tribune media empire nearly a century ago.
Collier said he has been using McCormick as his last name professionally, but not exclusively, for several years. He signed the initial purchase agreement as McCormick, but changed it to McCormick-Collier in Monday’s filing.
He is changing his last name to McCormick effective June 11, according to Monday’s SEC filing.
Other named investors in McCormick Media include John Lynch, former chief executive of the San Diego Union-Tribune, and Clancy Woods, a longtime radio executive who once ran the Sporting News Radio Network. Lynch, 71, had a short-lived NFL career and is the father of John Lynch Jr., the general manager of the San Francisco 49ers.
In February, Tronc’s second-largest shareholder, biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, agreed to buy the Union-Tribune and Los Angeles Times for $500 million in cash in a deal that received federal approval March 5, but has not been completed.
“We anticipate closing the deal,” Tronc spokeswoman Marisa Kollias said Tuesday.
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