Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, sold 50,000 shares of his company’s stock last week, a day after declaring that the family-owned newspaper was not for sale.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing released on Monday evening, Mr. Sulzberger sold 50,000 shares at $12 a share on Aug. 8. The filing noted that Mr. Sulzberger continued to own 173,675 Class A shares in company stock.
Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company, said that the stock sale “is part of Arthur’s normal estate planning.” She said that the 50,000 shares represented a small percentage of his holdings, which in addition to Class A shares include stock options and shares held in a family trust.
“Personally, he is still very invested in Times Company stock,” Ms. Murphy said.
The Times Company has a dual share structure: Class A stock, which is publicly traded, and a special class of stock, Class B, that allows the Sulzbergers to elect about 70 percent of the company’s board.
Mr. Sulzberger’s sale followed a week of upheaval in the newspaper industry, in which The Times sold The Boston Globe to John W. Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, and the Graham family announced that after 80 years it was selling The Washington Post to Jeffrey P. Bezos, founder of Amazon.
After those sales, there was speculation among media analysts that Mr. Sulzberger and his relatives would follow suit and consider selling The Times. The Times is one of the last major American newspapers run by a family.
But last Wednesday, Mr. Sulzberger and Michael Golden, the company’s vice chairman and Mr. Sulzberger’s first cousin, issued a statement stressing that they had no plans to sell The Times. The most recent earnings released by the Times Company show that it swung to a profit in the second quarter, with gains in digital subscriptions, though it still faced a challenging advertising market.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/business/media/times-chairman-sells-a-portion-of-his-stock.html?partner=rss&emc=rss