McClatchy’s top creditors offer to buy company

McClatchy’s biggest creditors made an offer to purchase the company April 16, the company’s D.C. bureau reported. Creditors Chatham Asset Management and Brigade Capital Management set a sale price in excess of $300 million and a deadline in July.

The two creditors asked Judge Michael E. Wiles to see them as a stalking horse bidder. In bankruptcies, a stalking horse enters a starting offer that serves as a jumping off point for other offers.

If their action is approved, it would prompt an auction for ownership of the company.

McClatchy is the country’s second-largest local media company. It declared bankruptcy in February. The company’s Chapter 11 case is unfolding in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Under terms of the proposed credit bid, McClatchy would remain one company, which will emerge from Chapter 11 having resolved its legacy debt and pension obligations, the company said in a news release.

Nieman Lab predicts that with McClatchy’s moves, the Gannett-GateHouse merger and a possible Tribune-MNG consolidation, by summer’s end, five big U.S. newspaper chains will be down to two.

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