The Chronicle Herald sign is seen in Halifax on Thursday, April 13, 2017.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
A Toronto-based restructuring firm says several bidders have offered to buy all or part of SaltWire Network and The Halifax Herald, the two insolvent companies that operate Atlantic Canada’s largest newspaper enterprise.
KSV Restructuring Inc., in a report filed Friday, said some of those non-binding offers, if accepted, would enable the deeply indebted businesses to continue operating beyond the restructuring process.
KSV’s report does not say how many bids were received by Thursday, the initial bidding deadline, and it doesn’t provide any details about who made the bids.
The next step is for KSV to conduct a due diligence process that will determine which bidders will be asked to submit binding offers by May 24 at 5 p.m., which could lead to court approval for a transaction no later than June 28 and an anticipated closing deadline of July 31.
On March 13, a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge granted the media companies and their subsidiaries protection from creditors owed about $90 million.
The Halifax-based companies own daily newspapers in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, including Halifax’s Chronicle Herald, the Cape Breton Post in Sydney, N.S., the Telegram in St. John’s and the Guardian in Charlottetown.