Tronc Vice Chair Soon-Shiong to Leave Board

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 1:48PM EST · Published Mar 20, 10:05AM EDT

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Tronc Vice Chair Soon-Shiong to Leave Board — © Thinkstock

Tronc Inc.’s (NASDAQ: TRNC) Vice Chairman Patrick Soon-Shiong will not stand for reelection, according to a list of directors in the current company proxy statement. The statement also shows he is the second largest shareholder and owns 12.9% of its shares via Nant Capital.

The move was unexpected. Soon-Shiong bought his initial stake in Tronc as a support to Chairman Michael W. Ferro Jr., who owns 15.9% of shares via Merrick Media.

Soon-Shiong is one of the wealthiest people in the United States. Forbes puts his net worth at $8.4 billion. The magazine says most of this is due to a sale of pharma companies “Abraxis and American Pharmaceutical Partners for a combined $9.1 billion.”

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According to Crain’s Chicago Business:

A major rift has emerged on the board of the company that owns the second-biggest U.S. newspaper chain, and a battle for control could be brewing.

The media company Tronc, formerly known as Tribune Publishing, controlled by Chairman Michael Ferro, is pushing out its vice chairman, Patrick Soon-Shiong. Still, the billionaire biotech mogul is bulking up ownership of the company even as he heads for the exit.

Tronc last year turned down an offer by Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI). More recently, Tronc was in the bidding for Us Weekly, which American Media finally bought. The price tag was estimated at $100 million.

Tronc had $198 million in cash on its balance sheet at the end of last year, much of it provided by equity purchases of company stock by Soon-Shiong and Ferro. For 2016, Tronc made $6 million on revenue of $1.6 billion.

Tronc stock soared almost 6% last Friday and reached $14.12. Shares are flat this year.

It is open to question whether there are sharp disagreements between Ferro and Soon-Shiong about the future of the company.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.