Deals

Oak Hill buys NY Times TV stations

The Robert Bass-affiliated private equity firm will pay $575m for nine network-affiliated, regional television stations.

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Oak Hill Capital Partners agreed to purchase nine network-affiliated television stations from The New York Times Company for $575 million (€439 million), the New York Times announced.

The stations include small-city affiliates of NBC, CBS and ABC in Iowa, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Illinois, Virginia, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

“We believe. . . that our focus now should be on the development of our newspapers and our rapidly growing digital businesses and the increasing synergies between them,” said New York Times chief executive Janet Robinson in a statement.

Over the past five years, the New York Time’s share price has declined from above $50 per share to today’s closing price of $23.34.

Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisor to the New York Times.

Oak Hill has as its largest investor Robert Bass, the Texas investor who once employed Texas Pacific’s David Bonderman, among other investment luminaries.

In 2005 the firm closed its second private equity fund on $2.5 billion. Oak Hill is led by managing partner J. Taylor Crandall.