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Social network giant ends day at $38.23 (£24), up just 0.61% from its starting price after share sale got off to a messy start
Facebook's first day as a public company ended with the company narrowly avoiding the embarrassment of its stock dipping below the $38 (£24) starting price, in one of the most frenzied share sales in history.
Shares in the social network giant ended the day at $38.23, up 0.61%, having soared 11% earlier in the day. A record 566m shares traded hands as the company joined the Nasdaq stock market where it is now valued at $104bn, more than the combined worth of Goldman Sachs and Nike.
Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 28-year-old founder and Facebook's largest shareholder, saw the value of his holding reach $20.4bn by the time the market closed.
The sale got off to a messy and inauspicious start. Early trading was delayed until 11.30am as the exchange systems seemed unable to cope with the scale of the initial public offering (IPO) and failed to send electronic reports back to traders and firms to confirm that shares had been bought or sold. After the market closed, CNBC reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking at the Nasdaq trading problems.
When trading eventually did start, more than 82m shares were traded in the first 30 seconds. The share price soared 11% before quickly collapsing to close to the $38 offer price.
Dealers speculated that Facebook's army of bankers had stepped in to stop the shares falling below $38, a move that would have landed the social network with a public relations disaster on its first day as a public company.
Sam Hamadeh, founder of the analyst PrivCo, watched the day unfold at the Nasdaq exchange. "It was stunning," he said. "I have not seen anything like it in 20 years of watching this market."
He calculates that the banks who underwrote the share sale stepped in and bought $300m worth of shares to stop Facebook dipping below $38, a move that would have marked Facebook as a "busted IPO".
"It doesn't matter so much to Facebook, they raised their money butit's not a great start," said Hamadeh, who said he believed Facebook was worth $24-$25 a share. "And that's being generous."
Before the shares started trading the estimated price reached $45, triggering a wave of sell offs that Nasdaq could not handle, said Hamadeh. Nasdaq did not return calls for comment. He predicts that the shares will fall further next week. "The banks can't support this thing forever," he said.
For now the share price is not Zuckerberg's primary concern. "Of course the money means something to him," said David Kirkpatrick, author of the Facebook Effect. "But he's not doing it just for the money and he assumes that rather than focus on the money, he should focus on making sure Facebook does well. He is highly analytical in everything he does, extremely disciplined. He is not going to be watching that stock price every day, I can tell you that."
Facebook's stock market debut had begun with Zuckerberg - wearing his trademark navy blue hooded top - remotely ringing the opening bell for the New York-based stock exchange from outside his California headquarters as staff cheered him on. Forbes calculated that as he did so, he was the world's 23rd richest man – two places above Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
However, the riches generated by Facebook went wider. At $38 a share Facebook created 88 people with fortunes of over $30m, according to Wealth-X, an analyst that monitors high net worth individuals. If the price reaches $43, there will be 265 Facebook millionaires worth more than $30m.
The sale reaped enormous rewards for Facebook's co-founders and early backers. Co-founder Dustin Moscovitz is now worth over $5bn. Elevation Partners, an investment firm that counts U2 singer Bono among its partners, holds shares worth over $1.6bn.
Facebook's IPO is the most hotly anticipated share sale since Google's in 2004. Google's stock started trading at $85 and ended the day at $100.34. Google's shares now sell for over $620.
As with the Google IPO, there has been a lot of scepticism about Facebook's ability to turn its phenomenal number of users into a business able to support a $100bn-plus valuation. Facebook's revenues were $3.7bn last year. Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, had revenues of close to $29bn and is valued at half Facebook's current value.
The social network now has over 900 million people on its service and will soon top a billion. For its fans, Facebook is the defining company of the 21st century. "His impact on the world will be as least as big as Bill Gates and probably already has been," said Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick has spent many hours with Zuckerberg writing the only authorised history of the company. He said Zuckerberg had a "laser focus" on business and planned to spend Friday working rather than watching the share price.
"He really doesn't believe in paying attention to that stuff. He's much more focussed on product development, on penetration of the service around the world," said Kirkpatrick.
The sale comes amid what some are calling a new bubble in tech companies. Facebook's IPO follows a mixed set of share sales from other social media firms including Groupon, the online coupon company, and Zynga, the games firm behind Words With Friends and Draw Something.
Facebook itself has driven up the bubble, according to some, by spending $1bn on Instagram, a profitless photo-sharing application.
Earlier this week Pinterest, a social site that lets people "pin" pictures and content to create collections of interest, raised $100m at a price that valued the company at $1bn.
"There is a frenzy going on. I think this is a bubble," said Alan Patrick, co-founder of technology consultancy Broadsight. "Short term I can see that Facebook can be valued at $100bn on sentiment. People believe that it is going to make a lot of money. But sentiment doesn't last."
He said Facebook had yet to prove that it could make money on mobile devices, the fastest growing way in which people access Facebook.
However, the share sale comes in a week when General Motors announced it was dropping its own Facebook ads and said they were not working. GM is one of the world's largest advertisers and spent $1.83bn on US ads last year, according to Kantar Media, an ad-tracking firm.
Nigel Morris, chief executive of ad giant Aegis Media Americas, said: "We handle a number of clients who are advertising very successfully on Facebook. For others we are evaluating the right approach. The issue for Facebook is not whether revenues will grow, it's whether they will grow fast enough to justify this valuation."
Whatever the future for Facebook, its founders and early investors were certainly celebrating. Co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who is now worth over $2.7bn, congratulated Zuckerberg on his Facebook page: "Congrats to everyone involved in the project from day one till today, and I especially wanted to congratulate Mark Zukerberg (sic) on keeping tremendous stead-fast (sic) focus, however hard that was, on making the world a more open and connected place."
Cost of body set up to internally investigate hacking and illegal payments revealed as group publishes accounts
Rupert Murdoch's London operation has spent more than £50m on the company's management and standards committee, taking the total bill of costs associated with the closure of News of the World and dealing with the fallout of the phone-hacking scandal to in excess of £300m.
Accounts published by NI Group – the parent company of the Sun, Times, Sunday Times, and the now-defunct News of the World – also revealed its directors took home a combined £5m and that its highest-paid director earned £1.9m in the year to 3 July 2011.
NI Group said it has spent £53.2m between July 2011 and 8 May to run the MSC, the body set up to internally investigate phone hacking and illegal payments within News International, with the costs attributed to "primarily legal and professional fees". Linklaters are the MSC's principal lawyers.
The costs of advisers had not previously been disclosed, although the accounts of other subsidiaries had already revealed that News Corp's British division had taken an exceptional charge of £23.7m in the year to 3 July to meet legal fees and damages of hacking claimants such as Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan.
Other previously disclosed costs relating to the closure of the Sunday tabloid are recorded on the company's accounts as post balance sheet events. In addition there is a £55.5m charge relating to redundancy and restructuring costs and legal fees directly related to the closure of NoW – and NI Group said it had incurred another £14.4m charge relating to a further "restructure of the workforce to match the requirements of the business".
The company has already made a £160m non-cash write off on the value of "publishing rights" for News of the World, which closed last July in response to the phone-hacking scandal, filed in its results for subsidiary NGN which were published last month. Taken together the legal bills and redudancy costs totalled £146.8m and with the write-off added in, the total rises to £306.8m.
"News Group Newspapers [parent firm of the Sun and NoW] is subject to several ongoing investigations by regulators and various governmental authorities," said NI Group.
"NGN has admitted liability and settled a number of civil cases related to voicemail interception allegations. NGN also has litigation ongoing and outstanding in relation to voicemail interception allegations for which there is a high level of uncertainty in respect of potential damages and legal costs which may be payable."
A breakdown of pay to individual directors is not given in NI Group's financial filing to Companies House, but six directors are listed as serving the company in the year to 3 July including the former chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, James and Rupert Murdoch and ex-NI operations officer Clive Milner.
The financial report shows that year-on-year total director remuneration rose from £4m to £5m and the highest-paid director, who was not named, got a pay rise from £1.3m in 2010 to £1.9m in 2011.
However, with so few of the charges included in last year's figures, NI Group was able to report a 13.3% increase in pre-tax profits for the year to £162.6m. Revenues at the business which also includes Harper Collins UK remained flat at £1.36bn as operating profit rose 11% to £113.4m.
Revenue at its newspaper publishing operation increased marginally to £1.09bn. Revenue from the HarperCollins book publishing division eased 3.7% to £266.6m. However NI Group said the book publishing operation recorded its highest margin percentage for three years.
During the year to 3 July 2011 the company published titles including The Third Man by Peter Mandelson andthe Game of Thrones series by George RR Martin, which is currently airing its second TV season on Sky Atlantic. Digital book revenues grew seven-fold year on year to account for about 19% of trade revenue, NI Group said.
The company said its staff, which have become stretched from the seven-day operation on the Sun, were its "most valuable asset" with 4,318 employed in the year to 3 July. Just under 3,000 were employed in the newspaper business and just under 1,300 in book publishing.
"Despite the closure of the News of the World and the subsequent impact on the business, as well as the ongoing uncertainty surrounding issues arising from that, the directors consider that the group remains in a healthy position financially," said NI Group.
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Manchester United star likely to receive tens of thousands of pounds as 46 other claims continue against News International
Ryan Giggs has settled his phone-hacking civil action against News of the World publisher News International, the high court has been told.
The amount the Manchester United star received in damages was not disclosed at a phone-hacking case management conference at the high court on Friday, but is likely to run to tens of thousands of pounds.
Giggs launched his action against the News of the World almost a year ago, in June 2011, weeks after he was visited by Metropolitan police officers who told him his name was in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal.
He was in the first group of litigants to sue News International last October but was one of six carried over to the second round of cases because of outstanding issues.
The Mulcaire paperwork details the private investigator's activities during 2005 and 2006, when Giggs was allegedly conducting an eight-year affair with his sister-in-law, details of which were revealed by the News of the World shortly before its closure last year.
Hugh Tomlinson QC, the counsel for phone-hacking victims, told the case management conference on Friday that there were still 46 active cases against News International.
"There are 47 issued claims on the register, one of which has settled since the last case management conference," Tomlinson said in court.
One new case has been lodged since the last case management conference, by TV presenter June Sarpong, who hosted a Channel 4's Sunday morning strand T4 for eight years.
Others on the list of active claimants include Cherie Blair, David Beckham's father Ted, actor Jimmy Nesbitt and Emma Noble, John Major's former daughter in law.
Mr Justice Vos, who is overseeing the phone-hacking litigation, said there were "over 100 cases" on the group register, indicating that many more have yet to file their claims with the court.
Friday's case management conference was aiming to establish a tariff of costs that could be expected by any new claimant.
Vos is determined to keep costs down by ensuring common research is shared among all litigants where possible. He repeated his warning made at the last conference that litigants were entitled to representation but not to use solicitors who had no knowledge of phone hacking and passed all ensuing costs on to News International.
Tomlinson told the court there were three types of cases ranging from the worst instances of sustained phone hacking and surveillance, such as that suffered by Jude Law, to the smaller cases which involved hacking but did not result in any article being published.
Asked how many cases similar to Law's were likely to come before the court, Michael Silverleaf, QC for News International, said: "I don't think it would be in the tens."
Law was awarded damages of £130,000 earlier this year after it emerged he had been targeted for three years between 2003 and 2006.
Vos said he wanted to ensure costs were "modest" and proportionate to the damages but said claimants who did not have articles published against them still had the right to a full investigation.
"Clients will only settle when they know the are being properly investigated. It has to be a cathartic. The whole purpose of this litigation is to achieve peace with the people who have been intercepted," the judge said.
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On-air mistake occurred in report on Twitter users who allegedly revealed identity of footballer Ched Evans's victim
North Wales police have referred Sky News to the Crown Prosecution Service and the attorney general's office following the accidental broadcast of a rape victim's name.
Officers from North Wales police on Thursday questioned four staff at Sky News' Osterley headquarters in south west London after the broadcaster inadvertently displayed a Twitter feed that named the 19-year-old victim on air last month.
The on-air mistake occurred as part of a report on Twitter users who allegedly revealed who footballer Ched Evans's victim was following his conviction for rape.
Sky News said in a statement: "Yesterday we met with North Wales police to demonstrate and explain the technical error which caused the inadvertent broadcast of the victim's name in a recent serious sexual assault case.
"The name was on screen for a fraction of a second and was visible only when viewed in slow motion. We apologised to the victim and her family as soon as we became aware of the error and are co-operating fully with the police."
A formal interview took place with Sky News staff and the investigation will continue, according to the north Wales force, which said that it was now up to the CPS whether to press charges.
A North Wales police statement confirmed: "The case, as with all other cases in the investigation into the naming of the victim on social media sites, will be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service and the attorney general's office."
Detective chief inspector Steve Williams said that Sky News "has fully co-operated with the investigation".
Sixteen men and women from north Wales and South Yorkshire have been arrested and bailed during the investigation so far.
The police statement added: "The force is reminding people that the law gives rape victims and other victims of serious sexual offences, anonymity for life and that if anyone publishes a victim's identity they will be subject to investigation and possible criminal proceedings."
Evans was jailed for five years last month at Caernarfon crown court after being found guilty of raping the woman who was "too drunk to consent".
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Former special adviser Adam Smith and lobbyist Frédéric Michel to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week
The two men at the centre of the row over Jeremy Hunt's handling of the News Corporation/BSkyB deal – his former special adviser Adam Smith and lobbyist Frédéric Michel – are to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week.
Lord Justice Leveson will also be hearing evidence next week from former Labour cabinet ministers Tessa Jowell, Alan Johnson, Lord Mandelson, Lord Reid and Lord Smith, broadcasters Andrew Marr and Jeremy Paxman, and phone-hacking campaigner Tom Watson MP.
Adam Smith and Michel will appear on Thursday. Adam Smith resigned as culture secretary Hunt's special adviser last month, after 163 pages of emails written by Michel when he was News Corp's head of European public affairs in 2010 and 2011 were released by the company to the Leveson inquiry.
Those emails, written over several months, appeared to show that Hunt's office was passing information about the minister's BSkyB bid approval process to the company during 2010 and 2011. Michel repeatedly described information he had obtained to his boss, James Murdoch, as emerging from Hunt himself.
The culture secretary denied there was an inappropriate relationship between himself and News Corp. Adam Smith resigned when it emerged that the bulk of Michel's contact was with him rather than Hunt directly.
Hunt said that the volume and tone of the Adam Smith/Michel communication could not be justified, but insisted that he oversaw the Sky bid correctly in a quasi-judicial manner. The culture secretary is also expected to appear at the inquiry.
In February Michel was promoted to News Corp's senior vice-president of government affairs and public policy for Europe, based on Brussels.
James Murdoch described Michel as the firm's "PO box" for correspondence between government ministers and the Murdoch empire during his Leveson inquiry evidence in April.
"On various levels, he was the liaison with policymakers," Murdoch said, describing Michel as a diligent employee. News Corp insiders saw him as a "James Murdoch acolyte".
Former Labour culture secretary Jowell, the MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, received £200,000 from News International after settling her civil claim for breach of privacy over News of the World phone hacking. Of this, £100,000 was paid to a charity of Jowell's choice.
Jowell will be giving evidence to the inquiry on Monday, along with Mandelson, who is likely to be asked about his dealings with journalists, editors and executives from News International and other national newspaper publishers during his time as Labour's director of communications in the 1980s, and from 1997 as a cabinet minister.
Lord Smith, another former culture secretary, will be appearing on Tuesday along with Johnson, the former education, health and home secretary, and Watson, the Labour MP who has doggedly pursued Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation over the scandal.
BBC presenters Marr and Paxman are up on Wednesday, along with Reid, the former Labour defence and home secretary, and Stephen Dorrell MP, who oversaw media policy as heritage secretary in John Major's Conservative government in the mid 1990s.
Also appearing on Thursday with Michel and Smith will be Lord Brooke, another former Tory heritage secretary in the early 1990s.
Policy thinking on internet piracy, public service broadcasting and spectrum unlikely to be published until the autumn
The planned publication of a communications green paper has been put on hold until after Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, has given evidence to the Leveson inquiry and dealt with accusations that he favoured News Corporation in its negotiations to buy all of BSkyB.
Those close to Hunt's Department for Culture, Media and Sport say the communications green paper, which will set out the government's initial policy thinking in areas as diverse as internet piracy, public service broadcasting and spectrum allocation, has largely been written but is now unlikely to be published until autumn at the earliest.
Hunt and his deputy, Ed Vaizey, had hoped to publish the document in the spring but Hunt's attention has been concentrated on the need to give a full account to Lord Justice Leveson of his relationship with Rupert Murdoch's company and see off Labour calls for him to resign.
One source said Hunt and the DCMS were distracted by the Murdoch controversy and it would be impossible for the document to be published until September at the earliest, assuming the culture secretary gives a successful performance before the judge.
There are also suggestions that the green paper could be shelved completely, with ministers instead moving to publish a white paper that by then would incorporate any relevant recommendations arising from the Leveson inquiry about the future of press regulation.
Leveson is due to report in October, and if his document appears before the green paper, it may have to be redrafted to include the government's initial response to his findings.
If Hunt were to be replaced, a new culture secretary would want to review the document before agreeing to release it. The culture secretary has been under fire after 163 pages of emails written by News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel were released by the company to the Leveson inquiry.
The culture secretary denied there was an inappropriate relationship between himself and News Corp. But his special adviser Adam Smith did resign when it emerged that the bulk of Michel's contact was with Smith rather than Hunt directly.
Hunt said that the "volume and tone" of the Smith/Michel communication could not be justified, but insisted that he oversaw the Sky bid correctly in a "quasi-judicial" manner.
Ministers are still officially insisting that the green paper will emerge in the spring. But the joke understood to be circulating in at the DCMS is that spring in Whitehall can run from anywhere from February to November.
The green paper marks the start of a legislative process that will culminate in a communications bill scheduled for the 2014/15 session of parliament.
Meanwhile Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, told a meeting of the campaign group Hacked Off that there should be the "equivalent of the knife amnesty" for newspapers and politicians before regulatory reforms are introduced for the press. She said both sides needed to stop attacking each other and start with a clean slate once the Leveson inquiry made its recommendations.
"At the end of the day what I hope is that we have is no victors and no vanquished here," she said.
Steve Coogan moves character from BBC for two one-hour specials and TV adaptation of online series Mid Morning Matters
A-ha! His BBC television career famously came to an end when he thrust a lump of cheese in his commissioning editor's face. Now Steve Coogan's most famous creation, hapless Norfolk DJ Alan Partridge, is changing channels to Sky.
Coogan will star as Partridge in two new one-hour specials as well as a TV adaptation of his online series, Mid Morning Matters. The shows will appear on Sky Atlantic as part of an output deal with Coogan's production company, Baby Cow.
The BBC has been the home of Partridge since he started out reading the sports news on BBC Radio 4's On The Hour. The last series of I'm Alan Partridge aired on BBC2 in 2002.
Coogan's Sky Atlantic deal also includes Welcome to the Places of my Life, which will see Partridge take viewers on a tour of his beloved home county, Norfolk. A second Partridge special will feature the DJ being interviewed for a local book club by author Chris Beal, played by Robert Popper.
The specials will be executive produced by Coogan with his Baby Cow business partner Henry Normal and The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci, who is also involved in bringing Partridge to the big screen in a long-awaited film version next year.
Coogan said: "Alan has been off the TV for too long but he is even more excited than me about his chance to have a second bite of the cherry. Alan feels the second decade of the millennium is the right time."
Mid Morning Matters, which aired online last year in an initiative funded by beer brand Foster's, will be re-edited for TV in a six-part "special edition" with a second series next year. Partridge published his "autobiography" last year.
The Baby Cow deal also includes an animated children's tale, Uncle Wormsley's Christmas, narrated by Coogan, and a two-part look at Coogan's 2009 standup tour in Australia and New Zealand.
A high-profile victim of phone-hacking, Coogan's more recent television appearances have been connected to his legal action against News International, publisher of the now-defunct News of the World, which he settled earlier this year.
Sky, not previously known for its homegrown comedy output, has been investing heavily in the genre of late with shows such as Stella with former Gavin & Stacey star Ruth Jones, and Trollied starring Jane Horrocks. Other new projects will star Kathy Burke, Julia Davis and Jack Dee.
Sky's head of comedy Lucy Lumsden said Sky Atlantic was "providing our best writer performers the space to feel creatively free".
Launched last year, Sky Atlantic is home to the satellite broadcaster's high profile US dramas including Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, for which it bought the rights after four series on BBC4.
The pay channel will also air West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin's latest drama, The Newsroom, as well as Iannucci's US comedy, Veep.
Normal, who is chief executive of Baby Cow, said the company was "at the beginning of a great adventure".
High court says broadcasters including BBC, ITN and Sky News do not have to hand over Dale Farm eviction footage to police
The high court has ruled that news broadcasters including the BBC, ITN and Sky News do not have to hand over footage of the Dale Farm eviction to police.
In a ruling handed down at the high court on Thursday morning, Mr Justice Eady said broadcasters did not have to disclose unbroadcast footage of the eviction to Essex police.
The judge said that the police need clear evidence of criminality when applying for production orders against the media.
Broadcasters including BBC, Sky News and ITN – the producer of ITV News, Channel 4 News and 5 News – won the right to a judicial review after they were told by Chelmsford Crown court to hand hours of footage of the Dale Farm eviction in October last year over to the police.
In his judgment on Thursday, Eady said that the Chelmsford Court decision failed to give any sufficient weight to the inhibiting effect of production orders on the press.
The ruling marks a significant victory for the media, which has campaigned strongly against being forced to disclose unbroadcast footage.
Broadcasters warned they would be seen as an extra arm of the state if they passed unaired footage to the police.
Eady said in his judgment: "The interference caused by such orders cannot and should not be dismissed mainly because a small proportion of that which is filmed maybe published.
"The judge should have feared for the loss of trust in those hitherto believed to be neutral observers if such observers maybe too readily compelled to hand over their material. It is the neutrality of the press which affords them protection and augments their ability freely to obtain and disseminate visual recording of events."
Eady and Lord Justice Moses described as scattergun and speculative the attempt by Essex police to obtain more than 100 hours of broadcast and unbroadcast footage from the media groups.
The ruling also applied to Hardcash, the independent producer behind a BBC Panorama documentary on Dale Farm, and Jason Parkinson, the freelance journalist who filmed an Essex police officer using a stun gun against a Traveller during the eviction.
Eady and Moses said that production orders should only be granted if there was cogent evidence of how important the unbroadcast footage would be in a police investigation.
Parkinson said he was "very happy" with Thursday's ruling because it recognised the impact production orders have on the "safety and impartiality of all journalists".
"This ruling to overturn the crown court's decision to grant the Dale Farm production order sends a very clear message to all police forces that these wide-ranging fishing trips will not be accepted by the UK courts and that we will not be forced into the role of unwilling agents of the state.
"We are not there as evidence gatherers to fill police intelligence databases with hours of material on activists or protestors. We are journalists and we are there to report the news and keep the public informed.
"In the last 18 months, every time one of these orders have been served it has put journalists in greater danger while trying to report on public order situations. I know this because I have been threatened and assaulted by people claiming my material will be used by the police. I am very happy to see [the high court] has recognised the impact these orders have on the safety and impartiality of all journalists and has made sure any future production order applications must take this into account, as was clearly not the case this time round."
NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: "Today is a huge victory for the cause of press freedom and the protection of sources and journalistic material.
"We are incredibly pleased that the NUJ and other media organisations have won the high court battle against the police production order to force journalists to hand over their Dale Farm eviction footage."
Media company owns 63 local newspapers across south-east US and is Buffett's second print news purchase in a year
Warren Buffett, the world's most famous investor, has made a big bet on small newspapers.
The billionaire investor has bought Media General, owner of 63 local US newspapers covering markets across Alabama, North Carolina, SouthCarolina and Virginia.
Buffet's BH Media, part of his Berkshire Hathaway investment company, paid $142m in cash for the titles. Under a separate credit agreement, Berkshire Hathaway will provide Media General with a $400m loan and a $45m revolving credit line.
The move is just the latest foray into print from Buffett. Last year Berkshire bought the Omaha World Herald Company, owner of Buffett's local newspaper and six other local titles. At Berkshire's recent annual shareholder meeting Buffett said he was considering other local newspaper acquisitions. "We may buy more newspapers. I think the economics will be ok, but it will be nothing like the old days," he told the meeting.
Announcing his latest purchase Buffett said: "In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper. The many locales served by the newspapers we are acquiring fall firmly in this mold, and we are delighted they have found a permanent home with Berkshire Hathaway."
Buffett, a former newspaper delivery boy, has long been a fan of newspapers and an investor in The Washington Post. But only a few years ago he was making dire predictions about the future of the industry.
Asked about newspapers as investments in 2009, Buffett said: "For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price. They have the possibility of going to just unending losses."
Buffett isn't the only billionaire showing an interest in newspapers. Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms billionaire, is a major shareholder in the New York Times. Earlier this year Gina Rinehart, billionaire daughter of mining magnate Lang Hancock, became one of the largest shareholders in Australia's Fairfax Media, publisher of The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and other titles.