One can forgive the Chicago Sun-Times for consigning a slew of parent company changes to a three-paragraph "business brief" in its Wednesday edition, reminiscent, as they were, of a half-decade of pain. Pain as only internecine warfare between management and shareholders can wreak. Pain of the sort only former press lord Conrad Black could inflict on his shareholders, his employers and, ultimately, himself.
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Sun-Times Media Group, the parent company previously named Hollinger International Inc. and previously controlled by Black, stated in its press release about this week's changes: "In light of recent developments, the special committee and the board determined that it is now appropriate to dissolve the committee and turn over related legal matters to the full board and the company's management."
It's appropriate, in other words, to close the book on that era of "corporate kleptocracy" so thoroughly documented in that 500-plus-page opus dubbed "The Hollinger Chronicles." It's sad, too, given what's happened to the company that ranked as the world's third-largest newspaper publisher when the shenanigans of Hollinger's Black-led management team began.
Today, with fewer than 300 shareholders and a stock price below 10 cents per share, STMG is headed for deregistration. That means its moniker, which was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in May, will also disappear from the OTC Bulletin Board.
STMG said it plans to submit its deregistration paperwork in January, setting the stage for an exit about the time an incarcerated Black is hoping a pardon from President George W. Bush will grant him an exit, too. (Only Black's will be from a Florida prison, where he's nine months into a six-and-a-half-year sentence.) Exhibit A in this latter case is Black's cell-penned blogs and columns, so shameless in their praise of our lame-duck commander-in-chief. - Richard Morgan
Richard Morgan is a senior editor covering media for The Deal.
