Canwest newspapers up for sale
Creditor protection sought even as acquisition plan announced
Last Updated: Friday, January 8, 2010 | 12:42 PM ET
Canwest Global Communications Corp. has put its newspaper publishing unit under bankruptcy protection, even as it announced its lenders have bid to buy the division outright.
In a Toronto courtroom on Friday, the Canwest Limited Partnership filed for creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act. The unit holds all of Canwest's newspaper and online operations, with the notable exception of the National Post.
The Winnipeg-based company's main television assets were put under court protection in October, but thus far, the publishing assets have operated outside that process.
Along with the creditor protection filing, a group of the erstwhile media conglomerate's lenders have also bid to acquire the unit's assets, and create an entirely new company in the process.
The lenders have also pledged to put up $25 million to carry the affected business units through the restructuring process.
The entire proposal still requires the approval of a majority of the company's debtors. The company has hired RBC Capital Markets "to canvass the market for superior offers for the business," a Canwest release said.
"As part of the CCAA filing, senior secured lenders have presented a fair, reasonable and fully financed proposal to acquire the whole of the company's business as a going concern," said a statement from McMillan LLP, a counsel to the company's lenders throughout its lengthy restructuring process.
"It is envisioned that the new company would retain substantially all of Canwest LP's employees and would assume all … obligations related to pensions and benefits."
The filing is not necessarily a threat to the company's many newspapers across the country, experts say.
"I don't think it means anything shuts down immediately," Ross Howard, a journalism instructor at Langara College in B.C., told CBC News.
"Most of their newspapers across the country have been operating close to profitable … so I don't think it means we lose the Vancouver Sun or the Province or the Courier or any of the weeklies in the immediate future."
Canwest LP owns and operates a host of daily and community newspapers across the country, including the Victoria Times Colonist, the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, the Regina Leader-Post, the Windsor Star, the Ottawa Citizen and The Gazette in Montreal.
With files from The Canadian Press
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/01/0 ... paper.html