The Dallas Morning News shareholders vote to deny hedge fund

Shareholders of DallasNews Corporation, owners of The Dallas Morning News, voted overwhelmingly to make a lot of money by being acquired by Hearst Corporation. (Hearst has been generous enough to describe this process as a ‘merger’ rather than an acquisition, but when a $13bn/year company buys a $125mn/year one, it’s hardly a merger of equals.) At one level, this was an easy decision: A share of DallasNews stock was trading at $4.39 when Hearst offered to buy it this summer; after the vote, shareholders will get $16.50 a pop. Few people will turn down a 275 percent return on investment (ROI). But the matter was complicated by Alden Global Capital, a rival chain, making a set of counteroffers that eventually reached $20.00 a share.