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Court approves Brown sale of assets

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By Matt Sanctis, Staff Writer Updated 11:46 PM Friday, September 3, 2010

URBANA — A U.S. Bankruptcy court judge approved a proposal Friday, Sept. 3, that would transfer the assets of the Brown Publishing Co. to a new entity made up of its lenders.

According to documents filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of New York, the Brown Publishing Co. will sell most of its newspaper assets, including the Urbana Daily Citizen and its other southwest Ohio publications, to Ohio Community Media, LLC., for $21,750,000.

Fred Solomon, vice president of corporate communications for the PNC Financial Services Group, declined to comment on the sale Friday. Ohio Community Media is owned by the lenders with a first-lien credit agreement with Brown Publishing, including PNC Bank, Prudential, Wells Fargo, Allied Irish Bank, AIB Debt Management, Brown Brothers and Harriman and Huntington National Bank.

Attorneys representing Brown publishing in the case also could not be reached for comment Friday.

A separate sale approved Friday will sell Dan’s Papers Inc., a Long Island New York paper group, to a separate company called Dan’s Paper’s Holdings, LLC, a limited liability company in New York, for $1,750,000.

The sale is the most recent step in a bankruptcy process that began in April this year. Executives at Brown Publishing had initially made a bid to purchase the papers at an auction, and transfer them to a company called Brown Media.

But that deal fell through when the lender for Brown Media backed out. The lenders were able to purchase the newspaper assets because they were the next highest bidder at the auction.

Local papers involved in the sale to Ohio Community Media include the Urbana Daily Citizen, the Troy Daily News, the Sidney Daily News, Greenville Daily Advocate, Piqua Daily Call, and Times Community Newspapers, among others. It also includes publications in South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Illinois, Iowa and Colorado.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0355 or msanctis@coxohio.com.

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