EyeQ Tech review EyeQ Tech EyeQ Tech tuyển dụng review công ty eyeq tech eyeq tech giờ ra sao EyeQ Tech review EyeQ Tech EyeQ Tech tuyển dụng crab meat crab meat crab meat importing crabs live crabs export mud crabs vietnamese crab exporter vietnamese crabs vietnamese seafood vietnamese seafood export vietnams crab vietnams crab vietnams export vietnams export

Breaking News

Russia launched intercontinental ballistic missile during attack on Ukraine, Kyiv says
Media

Tribune Publishing cancels controversial $9 million dividend

By
Keith J. Kelly
Published May 12, 2020, 4:28 p.m. ET

A controversial $9 million quarterly dividend that Tribune Publishing was planning to award to shareholders has been scrapped as the company that publishes the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News also moved for an extension to file a quarterly earnings statement scheduled for May 8.

The company also said it’s bidding adieu to its executive vice president and chief legal counsel, Julie Xanders, at the end of the month.

The dividend had become a hot-button issue for the Chicago News Guild as the company was negotiating with the union for additional cuts to the editorial staff at the Chicago Tribune.

In negotiations over the past two weeks, the company had declined to discuss the dividend, the union said.

But in an SEC filing on May 8, Tribune disclosed that the “board of directors has suspended the company’s quarterly cash dividend program until further notice given the unprecedented economic disruption caused by COVID-19.”

“Even after the COVID-19 outbreak has subsided, we may continue to experience significant impacts to our business as a result of the global economic impact, including any economic downturn or recession that has occurred or may occur in the future,” the filing said.

The company also warned that “our efforts to protect the health and safety of our employees may not be adequate, which could materially impact our business, financial condition and results of operation.”

The company also said that despite “salary reductions, elimination of staff positions, employee furloughs, revisions to manufacturing and distribution processes” and other moves “these measures may not be sufficient to prevent adverse impacts on our business and financial position from COVID-19.

Tribune plans to file its financial results within 45 days of the original May 8 release date and is still scheduled to hold its annual meeting on May 21.

That meeting stands to be contentious thanks to the emergence last November of Alden Global Management, a cost-cutting hedge fund that gained control of 32 percent of the common stock.

Two executives who are being proposed for the board, Christopher Minnetian and Dana Goldsmith Needleman, are being opposed by the union due to their ties to Alden and what the union called the duos “problematic track records.”

The company says that Minnetian, a former managing partner with the private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, was on the board of Hostess Brands when it filed for bankruptcy and laid off 18,000 workers. Needleman was on the board of Fred Inc., a drugstore chain, when it filed for Chapter 11 in 2019 and closed its doors laying off 6,500 workers.