« Richard Posner says "depression" | Main | Two charts on consumers »

NYT--a junk bond

Posted by Chris Farrell on Tuesday, January 20, 2009

A disturbing sign of the parlous state of the newspaper industry. The New York Times is a junk bond.

One of the nation's two flagship newspapers (the other is the Wall Street Journal) raised $250 million from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to shore up its faltering finances. The company will pay him 14.1% interest rate. That's a junk bond coupon.

He also gets warrants that can be converted into nearly 16 million common shares. If he exercises the warrants Slim will control about 18% of the company

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

Comment preview will appear below. If you are responding to another comment, your response will appear below the original comment when published. Your comment may not appear on the blog until several minutes after it was submitted.

Subscribe to RSS

Latest posts

Two charts on consumers

NYT--a junk bond

Richard Posner says "depression"

Target date funds

Here comes deflation

A CEO pay measure

Why did we borrow so much?

Cyles of American history

Timothy Geithner

More investment thoughts

Topics

Latest comments from recent posts

Target date funds (1)
zino wrote: If you think of it Wall street firms are always winners. Inv... [read]

Here comes deflation (2)
Evelyn wrote: Reading Bloomberg.com earlier today, some of their articles ... [read]

Comparing recessions. (2)
Chris Farrell wrote: I don't want to get into a back-and-forth on this, but since... [read]

There is good reason to be afraid (1)
Gregg W wrote: Interesting article. Just a thought: Why don't I recall anyt... [read]

Save for Retirement or Pay Down Mortgage Fast (5)
Vanessa wrote: I assume how long until you retire would be a factor in the ... [read]

January 2009
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Appearances and Worthwhile Events

Policy and a Pint: Health Care Handcuffs

More From
Chris Farrell

Marketplace Money's Money Clip Video

How Alan Helped Ben (BusinessWeek.com)

Other Blogs

Andrew Tobias

Angry Bear

Becker-Posner Blog

Brad DeLong

Cafe Hayek

Calculated Risk

Econbrowser

Economics Unbound

Economists View

Financial Rounds

Finance Roundtable

Greg Mankiw's Blog

Hot Property

Marginal Revolution

New Economist

TaxProf Blog

The Big Picture

Vox Baby