Atalaya Capital Management this morning doubled Creative Loafing Management’s bid to retain the alternative newsweekly chain, ending months of legal wrangling and 37 years of control by the Eason family.
Michael Bogdan, managing partner of the winning New York-based hedge fund, said he is committed to keeping the chain’s 230 employees and 400,000 readers in six cities.
“We are here for the long haul and we want to make this work,” Bodgdan said minutes after Federal Bankruptcy Judge Caryl E. Delano accepted Atalaya’s $5 million cash bid.
Creative Loafing bid $2.32 million in cash and other securities. The deal is expected to close within 10 days.
Bogdan and other Atalaya officials are tentatively set to meet Wednesday morning at the Marriott Waterside with publishers and other managers from the papers in Tampa, Sarasota, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2009.