By: E&P Staff Morgan Stanley Investment Management -- the recent gadfly shareholder of The New York Times Co. -- has sold its 7.2% stake in the company.
The Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin reports the company was mum about the move: "As a matter of policy, Morgan Stanley Investment Management does not publicly comment on changes in its portfolio."
Morgan Stanley has been agitating for two years for the New York Times to scrap its two-class stock structure that allows the Ochs/Sulzberger family control of the board. Fund manager Hassan Elmasry has been an outspoken critic about the compensation of executives, and the decline in the Times' share price.
Morgan Stanley has been a Times shareholder since 1996.
Bloomberg News reported late this afternoon: "New York Times shares slid 43 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $18.48 at 4:04 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the lowest since January 1997. The stock has declined 24 percent this year.
"Other newspaper stocks, including Gannett Co., owner of USA Today, and McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, are also trading at 10-year lows because of the loss of advertising to new media such as the Internet and the decline in classified ads linked to tumbling housing sales."
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