UPDATE, 10/30/13, 6:45 p.m. EDT: Goodwin Procter also advised The Washington Post Company on its sale, according to the firm. Technology companies partners Anthony McCusker and James Riley, along with counsel Kevin Lam, advised the company in connection with some intellectual property and licensing matters.
The sales of three legendary publications—The Boston Globe, Newsweek, and The Washington Post—kept lawyers busy through the weekend and into the beginning of the week.
In the latest of those deals, a Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton team is advising billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of online retailer Amazon.com, in his surprise $250 million purchase of the Post in an all-cash deal.
According to a Monday afternoon announcement by The Washington Post Company—which is being represented by Cravath, Swaine & Moore—Bezos is also acquiring various regional publishers that include The Gazette Newspapers and Southern Maryland Newspapers. Slate magazine, TheRoot.com, and Foreign Policy are not included in the sale and will continue to be owned by the Post Company along with various other brands and assets, including the newspapers’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters. The company will change its name in the wake of the transaction, though a new moniker has yet to be officially chosen.
Post Company chairman and CEO Donald Graham, whose family has owned the newspaper for roughly 80 years, said in a statement that Bezos’s tech and business success, among other attributes, made the Amazon founder “a uniquely good new owner for the Post.”
“I understand the critical role the Post plays in Washington, D.C., and our nation, and the Post’s values will not change,” Bezos said in his own statement.
The Cleary team advising Bezos is led by New York–based M&A partner Paul Shim. Employment partner Arthur Kohn, intellectually property partner Leonard Jacoby, real estate partner Steven Horowitz, tax partner Jason Factor, and senior attorney John McGill are also working on the matter.
The Cravath team providing counsel to the Post Company, meanwhile, is led by corporate partner Eric Schiele, working with compensation and benefits partner Jennifer Conway and associate Ting Chen. The company’s general counsel is Veronica Dillon, a former Simpson Thacher & Bartlett associate.
