Thread: Carlos Slim Becomes NYT's Largest Shareholder

http://www.unz.com/isteve/carlos-sli...t-shareholder/

How does this deal not make sense for Slim?
He’s a political billionaire — he’s an excellent businessman, but it’s not like he invented the telephone. (President Salinas sold him the Mexican government’s telecom monopoly and let him raise rates extravagantly. In return, Slim promised at the notorious 1993 Billionaire’s Banquet at the president’s mansion in Mexico City, Slim promised to donate $25 million to the ruling party’s re-election campaign.)
I believe (but could be wrong) that the stock Slim owns gives him less of a vote than the prime stock owned by the Sulzberger heirs, but so what? He now owns enough of the New York Times to hold a veto over the central hub of the world’s news media. By dumping NYT stock he can batter its stock price and get the numerous Sulzberger heirs angry at NYT management. It might cost Slim 0.1% of his fortune to punish NYT management for not following his editorial wishes, but that’s a tiny cost compared to the value of his veto power.
If you were the editor of the NYT, which would you think is a safer topic to crusade upon in 2015:
- the exorbitant long distance rates the sometimes Richest Man in the World charges poor Mexicanimmigrants to speak to their loved ones in Mexico?
- Or, the need for gender neutral bathrooms at middle schools to make transgender tweens comfortable?
The latter isn’t going to suddenly get you fired because you’ve peeved your largest shareholder.

Mexico now runs the New York Times. Great, the interests of Americans have not been represented in that paper for more than a decade now anyway.

W

Mexican billionaire becomes largest New York Times shareholder


01-14-2015

. . . The ownership doesn’t change control of the company. The Sulzberger family controls The New York Times Co. through a trust that owns 90 percent of its Class B stock, which isn’t publicly traded, and 3.8 percent of Class A shares. Holders of Class B stock can elect 70 percent of the company’s board . . .