Three Potential Buyers Emerge For Boston Globe

Three Boston businessmen, including a member of the family that used to own The Boston Globe, have emerged as suitors for the 137-year-old daily newspaper that The New York Times is trying to sell, the Globe reported on Friday.

The three are Stephen Pagliuca, a managing director at Boston private equity company Bain Capital and co-owner of the Boston Celtics basketball team; former advertising executive Jack Connors, and Stephen Taylor, a former Globe executive and member of the family that sold the Globe to the New York Times for $1.1 billion in 1993.

The Boston Globe's story comes a day after it reported that the Times hired Goldman Sachs to try to sell the money-losing paper.

The Times also is trying to sell its interest in the holding company that owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team and, according to the Globe, is willing to part with all of its assets in Massachusetts—a state that has proven to be a financial quagmire for the Times.

Taylor, who lectures about the economics of media and financing at Yale University and runs a small private investment firm called Densefog Group, declined to comment. Pagliuca and Connors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Pagliuca, Connors and Taylor are in various stages of reviewing the Globe's finances and getting investors to join their groups, the Globe reported, but added that it does not know if they formally will bid for the paper.

Connors in particular has not decided if he will proceed, the Globe said, citing a source familiar with his thinking.

A grinding slow-moving dispute between the Times and its largest union might delay the Globe sale because some potential bidders do not want to inherit a fight, the paper reported.

The Globe is set to record an $85 million operating loss this year and the Times Co has pressed its unions to come up with $20 million in cost cuts.

The Globe's biggest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, rejected the paper's plan for pay cuts and other concessions to save $10 million. The Times responded by cutting Guild members' pay by 23 percent.

The union has appealed this decision to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal government body that plans to hold a hearing on the situation next week.

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