Black mulled return to newspaper world
Former media baron was interested if Postmedia had to shed properties
TORONTO In early January, at the annual National Post forecast luncheon at the Canadian Club in downtown Toronto, Lord Conrad Black sidled up beside Postmedia Network Corp. CEO and president Paul Godfrey, and asked him about the Competition Bureau. At the time, the bureau was three months into a five-month-long examination of Postmedia’s proposed $316-million takeover of 173 Sun Media news assets. Black wanted to know how the rigorous review was proceeding. There had been rumblings that Postmedia may be forced to sell some publications in order to appease the Competition Bureau.
And Black, the controversial author, columnist and once the proprietor of the world’s third-largest English-language newspaper chain (including the National Post), hinted he might be a potential buyer for some of those properties should they become available.
That didn’t happen. But with the bureau’s “no-action” letter on Wednesday, Postmedia’s clearance to complete its blockbuster acquisition of the Sun chain could be as noteworthy for establishing Godfrey as the country’s pre-eminent media mogul as it might be for thwarting the possible resurgence of a man who, in the pre-digital era, ranked among the biggest press barons in the world.
It was in those fluid months between Postmedia’s October 2014 takeover announcement and Wednesday’s green light from Ottawa, that the former chairman of Hollinger Inc. emerged as an interested suitor — albeit a discriminating one under certain circumstances.
During a break at the luncheon, Black apparently told Godfrey that if Postmedia were forced to sell any of its papers, he wanted his name added to the list of prospective acquirers. Apparently, Godfrey politely demurred.
For his part, Black dismissed the brief encounter as a simple inquiry. “All I said to Paul was, that if any of the Postmedia dailies were offered for sale eventually, I hope they would remember me as among those to show the properties to,” Black said in an email Friday. “It was no less tentative than that.”
Furthermore, he added, “I think this PM-Sun deal should work well.” Besides, he’s not really interested in buying media properties. After all, he unloaded newspaper properties before he ran into legal troubles in the United States, most notably in 2001 when Hollinger Inc., the Toronto-based company he once controlled, sold 13 major metropolitan daily newspapers and 126 community and weekly publications to now-defunct Canwest Global Communications Corp. for a nifty $3.2 billion. As chairman of Hollinger, Black and his business partner David Radler once controlled an international newspaper empire that included the stable of Canadian dailies as well as the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and Britain’s Daily Telegraph. But that was almost two decades ago — and much has changed in Black’s world and the media sector.
Since his release from a minimum-security federal prison in Miami in May 2012 — he served 37 months of a 42-month prison sentence for convictions related to his dealings in the Canwest sale — Black returned to a vastly transformed media industry, writing a weekly column in the National Post and hosting an interview show on the VisionTV cable channel.
Still, the lure of the industry clearly beckons. The Montrealborn member of the British House of Lords owns shares in Postmedia, although it is “not a significant shareholding” he said. “As a modest shareholder, I exercised most of my rights and sold the rest; I am a satisfied shareholder, given my low entry price a couple of years ago,” he wrote.
At the same time, Black also still co-owns a stake in Horizon Publications Inc. — a private company that controls U.S.-based small community newspapers — with his ex-business partner Radler. The pair are still embroiled in a lawsuit launched by Black in 2011 that accuses Radler of illegally adding shareholders and debt to Horizon, without his knowledge. The allegations haven’t been proven in a court of law.
Radler, who spent less than nine months in a Pennsylvania jail after his plea agreement with the U.S. government in return for his testimony against Black in 2007, returned to publishing soon after his release on parole in 2008. The former lieutenant that Black accused of “Cain-like betrayal” lives in Vancouver and operates the Alberta Newspaper Group, a privately held regional newspaper chain that is 59 per cent owned by Glacier Media, which owns the Victoria Times Colonist and a handful of weekly papers it purchased from Postmedia in 2011. Radler also runs Continental Newspapers, which publishes three daily newspapers — the Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal in Ontario and the Kelowna Daily Courier and Penticton Herald in B.C.
Regardless of whether Black still craves the power afforded by media proprietorship, his options and resources are not what they once were. For one, he has a criminal record in the U.S. from convictions for one count of fraud and obstruction of justice for siphoning money from the sale of newspapers owned by Hollinger in the form of management fees after a protracted legal battle that went as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.
So rabid was the U.S. Attorney’s office in Illinois, where Hollinger International (now Sun Times) was headquartered, to snare Black that small armies from the U.S. government kept tabs on the whereabouts of every dollar in personal investments, offshore holdings, bank and brokerage accounts. Ditto for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the Canada Revenue Agency, that both sought tens of millions in unpaid taxes from him.
Last month, the former cardcarrying member of the Canadian Establishment was permanently banned by the Ontario Securities Commission from being a corporate director or officer of a public company in Canada’s largest capital market, even though Black told the OSC panel he had “absolutely no desire” to ever again take on such a role.
Alas, by giving its unconditional blessing to Postmedia’s purchase of the Sun Media newspapers, the Competition Bureau may have snuffed out the opportunity for a fascinating yarn.
Not so much whether Black could raise the money to buy newspapers again, rather how he would have negotiated with Postmedia’s board of directors when among them is Graham Savage, one of three directors on the special committee at Hollinger International who famously wrote the 500-page “corporate kleptocracy” report in 2004 accusing Black and his business associates of looting the company, ultimately triggering the fall of his media empire.
If any of the Postmedia dailies were offered for sale eventually, I hope they would remember me ...