Times will keep Globe

The New York Times is keeping the Boston Globe after all.

Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and CEO Janet Robinson told employees yesterday that they have decided not to sell the Globe, saying the paper has “significantly improved” its financial performance by consolidating printing facilities, boosting newsstand and subscription prices and winning $20 million in union concessions, among other measures.

“All along, we explicitly recognized that a careful restructuring of the Globe was one possible route and, thanks to your hard work, that is precisely what has been done,” Sulzberger and Robinson said in a memo.

The decision follows months of uncertainty over the future of New England’s largest daily. Earlier this year, the Times threatened to shut down the Globe, saying it was on track to lose $85 million, unless the unions agreed to cuts. After gaining the concessions, the Times still pursued a sale of the paper.

However, bidders didn’t exactly line up. The Globe attracted a couple of potential buyers, but the offers were nowhere near the $1.1 billion the Times paid for the paper in 1993.

Platinum Equity Partners, which bought the San Diego Union Tribune, and another investor group led by Stephen Taylor, a member of the family that sold the paper to the Times, each offered to pay $35 million and assume $59 million in pension liabilities. A third investment group, led by Bain managing director and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca and former adman Jack Connors, dropped out of the bidding.

The Times said it would continue to explore a sale of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, which it had been shopping along with the Globe and its Web site.