Prelude to a sale: National Post to join the family of CanWest dailies

If it can get permission from the courts and its senior lenders, the National Post is being moved out this Friday of its holding company, CanWest Media, to join other CanWest dailies and weeklies in CanWest Limited Partnership. This is not mere paperwork, but a means of tuning up the money-losing national daily and putting it in a place where it could be sold along with the other papers in the chain.

According to a story in the Globe and Mail, CanWest Limited Partnership will assume all of the National Post's obligations and liabilities under its pension plan; National Post employees will be offered employment with the new company.

Industry analysts say CanWest could fetch more than $1-billion for its newspaper assets as signs of life in the finances of the newspaper industry drive up interest in acquisitions.

One analyst, who asked to remain anonymous, has said that the National Post is considered a money-loser and that CanWest would want to lump it in with other more profitable papers in order to get it sold.

Chris Diceman, an analyst at Dominion Bond Ratings Service, believes if CanWest does go ahead with the rumoured plans, the company could pull in between $600-million and $900-million for the lumped together assets in a first round of bids.

“If there was a bidding war for these assets either in, or part of, creditor protection, that multiple may go up even higher than that,” he said recently.