New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. sold 50,000 shares in the company, according to an SEC filing, a day after the Ochs-Sulzberger family said the namesake newspaper is “not for sale.”
August 13, 2013 Leave a comment
Updated August 12, 2013, 7:51 p.m. ET
Sulzberger Sells Tiny Slice of Times Stock
Deal Follows Family’s Declaration That Flagship Newspaper Isn’t for Sale
New York Times Co. NYT +0.84% Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. sold 50,000 shares in the company, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in a deal just one day after the Ochs-Sulzberger family declared the company’s namesake newspaper was “not for sale.” Mr. Sulzberger sold the shares Aug. 8 at $12 a share, raising a total of $600,000, the filing said. The stock represented a tiny portion of his overall stake. A spokeswoman for Times Co. said the stock sale was part of Mr. Sulzberger’s “regular estate planning.”Mr. Sulzberger belongs to the Ochs-Sulzberger family that controls Times Co.Last week, Mr. Sulzberger and other members of Ochs-Sulzberger family sought to address speculation that they might sell the Times, following news that the Washington Post would be acquired by Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.19% founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos.
“Will our family seek to sell the Times? The answer to that is no,” Mr. Sulzberger and Vice Chairman Michael Golden wrote in an email to the newspaper’s staff on behalf of the family’s behalf.
Mr. Sulzberger’s sale of shares won’t affect the family’s control of the company, which is maintained through a block of supervoting shares. The shares he sold were Class A stock, the class held by most public shareholders in the company, that vote for a minority of the board.
The Sulzberger family controls the Times through their ownership of most of the class B shares outstanding, which vote separately for a majority of the board members.
After the sale, Mr. Sulzberger owns 173,675 class A shares directly, Monday’s filing said. A filing with the SEC earlier this year showed that as of March 4, Mr. Sulzberger also owned about 851,000 stock options. Separately, he had an interest in several million class A and B shares held through a family trust, according to SEC filings. The earlier filing showed that the family’s combined shareholding in the company has fallen to around 13%, down from 19% in 2010.
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