A Privileged World Begins to Give Up Its Secrets

About 10 years ago, when I was working in Frankfurt, Germany’s banking capital, I was invited to the top floor of the glittering skyscraper headquarters of one of the country’s most venerable banks. There, I was treated to something that, it was made clear to me, few eyes usually had the privilege of seeing — a tour of its private art collection, an impressive spattering of modern and ancient European and American masters.

The point was, those pictures reflected the bank’s wealth. And the fact the secretive treasures were kept forever behind closed doors for the enjoyment of the privileged few reflected its power.

If that seems like a different era, it is. Banks around the world are reeling, as we know; the European banks’ losses are among the most ruinous. And their prestige and putative secrecy and independence received a further blow last week, when the government of Switzerland agreed to release to the United States the names of 4,450 American citizens suspected of using secret Swiss accounts at UBS, the country’s biggest bank, for tax evasion.

The victory for the United States was made possible by evidence from an American-born whistleblower — code name Tarantula — a disgruntled former UBS employee from the Boston area who was working in Switzerland. Until he left the bank, he was part of a UBS team that made frequent trips across the Atlantic to aggressively market investment strategies to rich Americans to elude the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service.

But it would be wrong to see the settlement as a one-off strike against just one bank by a single government. It is in fact the result of a broader political moment created in the wake of the global financial crisis when disenchantment with financial globalization is causing governments to repatriate wealth back to within national borders, especially at a time when countries badly need to balance their books.

Just a few years ago, in the pre-crisis era, the shadowy workings of cross-border banking — and what may or may not have been happening there — were generally overlooked.

And, while some of the alleged tax evaders may be the war criminals, gunrunners or despots usually linked with secret foreign bank accounts, the target of the latest efforts are much more likely to include rich businessmen and high-net-worth individuals. “There is a political movement because of the financial debacle,” said one veteran European banker who insisted on speaking anonymously because he has retired. “They are turning toward the so-called rich and want to hurt them.”

Of course, the United States looks at it a bit differently. Prosecutors have contended that in the UBS case alone, wealthy Americans hid billions of dollars, thereby evading taxes of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

While Switzerland is arguably the largest off-shore center, it is not the only one. Supporters of its banking secrecy code point out that the code is wrapped up in the country’s claims to neutrality and being above the global political fray. But secrecy has also turned out to be immensely lucrative; according to some estimates one-quarter of the world’s offshore money now resides in Switzerland.

Other countries or territories have copied the model — Liechtenstein, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Macao and Hong Kong among them. And while Switzerland is probably seen as the most conservative, blue chip, upstanding offshore haven, the others are measured by a sliding scale of probity and association with dubious business practices, if not crime. The European banker said that in the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, he worked in Switzerland where he said agents of Russian expats would show up with “boxes of cash” from Cyprus, a popular haven for capital fleeing the Russian authorities and the country’s post-collapse chaos.

The backlash against this illicit world has not been confined to the United States; it is apparent across Europe, too.

France will become of one of the first European countries to put in place a new tax treaty with Switzerland to improve transparency and access to banking information. Germany is in discussions with Liechtenstein over issues related to tax evasion by German companies and individuals. Liechtenstein has also struck a disclosure agreement with Britain, encouraging British clients of Liechtenstein banks to volunteer information to British tax authorities in return for reduced penalties. In Italy, tax officials have started an investigation into whether the estate of the late Gianni Agnelli, the former chairman of Fiat, has money hidden away in Switzerland. In Britain, the government has become particularly exercised by tax competition — the offering of low tax rates and other advantages like tax secrecy to lure capital away.

In the Swiss settlement last week, the American authorities got the information they needed after they saw an opportunity in the weakness of UBS, a bank that once enjoyed a sterling global reputation but has suffered billions of dollars in losses linked to United States subprime securities and had to be saved by a big government bailout last October. For the Swiss government, the deal lifts the immediate threat of heftier legal action and frees the bank — one of the mainstays of the Swiss economy — to concentrate on recovery.

But will anything really change? Although the United States is supposed to learn the identities of a few thousand tax evaders, those names will go first to an intermediate tax administration in Switzerland for review. The actual process of recovering the names may become lost in bureaucracy and foot-dragging.

Moreover, as The Times reported last week, smaller Swiss banks say they are confident that they can continue to profit by finding new, more elaborate ways to protect the privacy of their clients. Those banks continue to help clients hide billions of dollars through complex structures in offshore havens.

But the I.R.S. commissioner, Doug Schulman, said the agreement with UBS was a “major step forward” in the government’s efforts to pierce bank secrecy, and he warned that “wealthy Americans who have hidden their money offshore will find themselves in a jam.”

In the new political climate, expect to see a few rich Americans shifting uncomfortably.

Rocking no more

Its eye on sports, CBS pulls plug on legendary WBCN

By James Reed and Erin Ailworth, Globe Staff | July 15, 2009

It was more than 40 years ago, on a March night in 1968, when WBCN-FM (104.1) decided to break from its classical music format. Instead of Bach, listeners that evening heard “I Feel Free,’’ by the Eric Clapton-led rock band Cream, and right then Boston’s local music scene was transformed.

Yesterday, it was upended yet again, by the same station.

CBS Radio Boston, which owns WBCN, announced it would pull the plug on the station, which helped make household names of some of the biggest musical acts to come out of Boston, so it could accommodate other changes in local radio.

Next month, a sports talk radio station, The Sports Hub, will replace the music station WBMX, or Mix 98.5 FM, adding a third sports radio show in a town that seems to have an insatiable appetite for all things sports. Mix 98.5 will then take its “modern rock, conservative format’’ to WBCN’s slot.

And WBCN, whose slogan, “The Rock of Boston,’’ had become as seminal as some of the performers the station championed early on – including Aerosmith, The Cars, J. Geils Band, U2, and Elvis Costello – will morph into an online-only station available at wbcn.com.

New sports talk station will take on WEEI.

It was stunning news for generations of Boston music fans, who grew up with the station at a crucial time in rock music’s evolution, and for local bands, who had come to rely on WBCN as the one place that might land them their big break. WBCN came of age with some of rock’s pivotal figures, from Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix, and its disappearance from the dial is as much a signal of the changing musical scene as it is of drastically changed listening habits. (One word: iPod.)

“Once their ratings started going down the tubes, I thought to myself, ‘Somebody’s not getting it in corporate,’ ’’ Charles Laquidara, one of WBCN’s quintessential personalities from 1969 to 1996, said from his home in Hawaii. On his Facebook page, he addressed WBCN’s fans: “It was a great station. It was also a great time in radio history. I know we can never go back to that, but there will be something someday.’’

Mark Hannon, senior vice president and market manager of CBS Radio Boston, said in an interview yesterday it is a “sad moment to see a station with 40-plus years of heritage coming out of format.’’ But, he said, “the rock genre in this marketplace is extremely crowded, and ’BCN has struggled in the past few years to stay competitive.’’

The decision, which will take effect Aug. 13, will ripple well beyond the airwaves, too, given the station’s longtime support for local bands.

In addition to “Boston Emissions,’’ ’BCN’s two-hour, weekly program showcasing local talent, the WBCN Rock ’n’ Roll Rumble has been a popular battle of the local bands since 1979. Occasionally, its winners went on to find national success. After winning the Rumble in 1983, ’Til Tuesday, Aimee Mann’s new-wave band, was signed to Epic Records; the cabaret-punk duo the Dresden Dolls emerged victors in 2003.

Anngelle Wood, who organized this year’s Rumble, said yesterday she was not sure of the event’s future. “Boston Emissions,’’ which she also hosts, will move to sister station WZLX in August.

The longtime ’BCN personality who became known simply as Oedipus said the loss of the station will cut deeper than some might realize.

“WBCN was a fabric of the community,’’ he said. “It was part of Boston, like the Red Sox. It was more than just music. It completely enveloped the lifestyle of people in Boston and the Northeast. And it no longer does that. It had to make this change. It’s reflected in the ratings.’’

Word of ’BCN’s demise was greeted with mixed emotions at competing stations, where program directors, many of whom grew up listening to ’BCN, said they’d been expecting the downfall. A Cornerstone Research Inc. report looking at men ages 18 to 49 in metro Boston shows ’BCN ranking in the number 11, 12, and 13 spots from January to May, with roughly 4 percent of the area’s listening market.

“The general public must be very surprised, but industry insiders have known they had their problems – let’s just leave it at that – for a number of years. So, we’re not really stunned,’’ said Ron Valeri, program director at WAAF and Mike FM. Still, he said it’s “a bittersweet victory.’’

At 101.7 WFNX, program director Keith Dakin recalled the heyday of WBCN, when personalities like Laquidara and Mark Parenteau graced the station’s airwaves.

“It’s great for us. We’ve lost an alternative rock competitor,’’ said Dakin. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s sad to lose a legendary rock station in this market, but as far as the competitive landscape, it’s great for a station like ’FNX.’’

Parenteau, a DJ at WBCN for 20 years, beginning in 1978, said that before corporate ownership, the station encouraged its on-air talent to be outrageous and play what they wanted.

“We didn’t make a lot of money, but we had a lot of freedom. We could play jazz, comedy, whatever,’’ Parenteau said. “But as we made more money, we had less freedom. It was like a deal with the devil.’’

Still, the station was enormously influential.

“If ’BCN added a band, 30 or 40 stations would add that band because we seemingly knew what we were doing,’’ he said. “The sort of station ’BCN used to be is definitely dead. Radio today is all driven by boards of directors looking at the stock market. They want the sure thing, and they want to play it over and over.’’

Before he was lead singer in the J. Geils Band, Peter Wolf was one of the founding DJs at WBCN. He started there in 1968, interviewing the likes of Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Sun Ra, and Roland Kirk. Wolf said he is neither surprised nor upset the station is going away. “For me, ’BCN ended a long time ago,’’ he said. “When it became corporatized, it lost the unique qualities that made it vital to the community.’’

Despite its founding in 1955 as a classical station, ’BCN became “the underground rock station in Boston,’’ said Scott Fybush, editor of NorthEast Radio Watch, an industry trade journal. “They were playing stuff that had no other home on the radio and people who had never had a reason to own an FM radio before were going out and buying an FM radio to hear this.’’

The station struggled for at least the last decade, propped up by its coverage of the Patriots and, at least for a time, Howard Stern’s syndicated show

Fybush called CBS Radio’s emphasis on building a sports station with Patriots coverage, a “smart move,’’ because it gives listeners something they can’t necessarily load onto their iPods – live coverage of games.

Of course, more sports and more talk means less rock for Boston listeners.

But Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research, said for many around Boston, that change had already begun.

“The ’BCN that most people are going to be sad about losing this afternoon,’’ Ross said, “went away a while ago.’’

Mark Shanahan and Don Aucoin of the Globe staff contributed reporting.

© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

An Adviser (Mine) Is Charged With Fraud

Potential Globe buyers emerge

3 businessmen have local roots

By Keith O’Brien and Beth Healy, Globe Staff | June 12, 2009

Three Boston businessmen – a Boston Celtics owner, a former advertising mogul, and a member of the family that ran the Globe for generations – have emerged as prominent potential buyers of the Globe, according to people knowledgeable about their interest in the city’s leading daily.

Actively mulling bids for the newspaper, according to these people, are Stephen Pagliuca, a private equity executive and Celtics co-owner; Jack Connors, co founder of a major advertising firm and chairman of Partners HealthCare; and Stephen Taylor, a former Globe executive and member of the family that sold the Globe to the New York Times Co. in 1993.

The sources, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to comment on the potential bids, said the three businessmen are in various stages of reviewing the Globe’s finances and assembling investors who could be part of their groups.

But whether these men will actually make formal bids on the newspaper is not known. Decisions may be delayed until the standoff between the Times Co. and the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe’s largest union, has ended, according to the sources with knowledge of the bidding process. And at least one of the three interested parties, Jack Connors, is still weighing whether he will proceed, according to one source knowledgeable about his thinking.

“The Steve Taylor group continues to be interested and is likely to continue trying to raise the money to buy the Globe. And Jack Connors has certainly been interested,” the source said. “But he’s trying to decide if he is going to go forward.”

The three names emerged yesterday just one day after potential buyers confirmed that the Times Co. has hired the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs to manage the potential sale of the Globe and is planning to seek bids for the newspaper in the weeks to come.

All three potential bidders declined to comment about their interest in buying the newspaper.

“Like a lot of other readers and concerned citizens of Boston, I have high hopes for the future of the Globe,” said Taylor. “I wish them well and have no comment on a possible acquisition.”

The three businessmen said to be considering a play for Boston’s 137-year-old newspaper have diverse backgrounds but share deep roots in the community and region.

Pagliuca, 54, was born in Framingham, played basketball at Duke University, and rose to the top echelons of the private equity world after earning his master’s degree in business administration at Harvard and doing stints in accounting and consulting.

He’s known in financial circles for his role as managing director at Bain Capital, the Boston buyout firm that Mitt Romney ran before he became governor, taking a leading role in such leveraged buyouts as Hospital Corp. of America and Burger King. But Pagliuca is also known in Boston’s sports world as part of the ownership group that bought the Celtics in 2003 and helped lead them to a championship last year. And he has some experience in media investing. He helped start Information Partners at Bain Capital, a media technology venture fund, and sits on the boards of the Weather Channel and the Gartner Group, a research and publications company.

Connors, a 67-year-old Roslindale native who now lives in Brookline, made his name as a prominent Boston advertising executive. He sold the Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos agency he cofounded in 1998 for more than $115 million, and has a net worth estimated at $500 million, according to published reports. He is chairman of Partners HealthCare, the region’s largest hospital system, is a major philanthropist and has been a forceful player in business matters across the city for many years. Connors has expressed interest in buying the Globe before, making his interest known in 2006.

And then there’s Taylor, 58, a cousin of past Globe publishers and a former Globe executive who left the newspaper nine years ago. Taylor, who lives in Milton, started at the Globe as a summer intern in 1971, joined the paper full time in 1980 and stayed for 20 years, becoming executive vice president of the paper and president of Boston Globe electronic publishing.

As lecturer in media at Yale University, Taylor has kept his hand in journalism in recent years, teaching a course on the economics and financing of journalism. Taylor also has connections to the world of finance, heading up a small private investment office called Densefog Group LLC.

Spokespeople for both the Times Co. and the Globe declined to comment yesterday. Also yesterday, a person connected to the Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. refuted a report that the real estate investment and management firm is interested in buying the Globe. This person, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said the report in the Boston Herald was not accurate.

If the Times Co. were to sell the Globe, it would mark the end of a relationship that began in June 1993 with smiles, handshakes, and a press conference at the Parker House. The deal was not only the largest ever paid for a newspaper – $1.1 billion – but was seen by many as a merger of two of the most prominent American newspaper families: the Sulzbergers and the Taylors.

Dubbed a “royal marriage” by some at the time, the relationship paid off through much of the 1990s as the Globe continued to reap high advertising revenues, especially through its classified department. However, as internet advertising became more common about a decade ago, and newspaper circulation started to fall as more people began to get their news online, revenue at the Globe and most other papers fell rapidly.

Two months ago, these problems came to a head when the Times Co. threatened to shut down the Globe if the paper’s unions didn’t agree to $20 million in concessions through steep wage cuts and other measures. Most of the major unions have since ratified the cuts, making the Guild, the Globe’s largest union, the last holdout when its members narrowly voted down concessions Monday.

The Times Co. has since imposed a 23-percent pay cut, effective Sunday, and the union has filed unfair labor practice charges against the company. The two sides will meet again Monday, with the financial fates of nearly 700 Globe staffers unclear.

The ongoing battle is giving some potential bidders pause, according to people with knowledge of the process. However, an expert in media mergers and acquisitions said he expects the Times will find a buyer for the Globe, given the cuts the Times Co. has demanded and won.

Larry Grimes, president of the Maryland-based W.B. Grimes & Company, said it appears the Times may have even had potential buyers in mind when asking for the cuts.

“I just think there’s been a scenario put forth to the Times. ‘Under these circumstances, we’ll buy the paper. Meet these conditions,’ ” said Grimes, whose company has overseen the sale of 1,400 publications since 1959. “And it looks like that’s what they’re trying to do.”

Keith O’Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com. Beth Healy can be reached at bhealy@globe.com. Globe reporter Casey Ross contributed to this story.

© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

New York vs. Boston: Now it’s personal

The Times’ ultimatum to the Globe is ‘taking a shot at the community’

By David Whitford, editor at large
Last Updated: April 9, 2009: 12:17 PM ET

BOSTON (Fortune) — One of the saddest ironies about the possible demise of the Boston Globe is that most of us in Boston got the news when we woke up last Saturday morning and read about it in the Globe. “Times Co. threatens to shut Globe, seeks $20m in cuts from unions,” was the front-page headline.

Wow, great story! I read the whole thing from start to finish before I even thought about putting the kettle on for coffee. I showed it to my wife as soon as she came downstairs. Everybody I ran into that day, wherever I went, that’s the first thing we talked about.

That’s what newspapers do. They put big topics on the civic agenda, they set up the common conversation. And in Boston, no newspaper does that like the Globe.

Not the Herald, which is great for sports and gossip but it’s a sideshow, frankly; and not the alt-weekly Phoenix (even if it did scoop the Globe Friday night when it broke the news on its Web site).

“The Globe helped build our city,” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino told Fortune. “The Globe holds people accountable on the issues, and that’s important. You might not like it sometimes. Sometimes we don’t agree. But they ask tough questions and back it up with data, real data. That’s what’s important. They’re out there doing their work. It would be a real travesty if they weren’t around.”

Newspapers are struggling everywhere, we get that in New England. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News died earlier this year. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Christian Science Monitor switched to online only. In Detroit, the Free Press and the News quit making home deliveries all but three days a week.

All were victims of what Ben Taylor, former publisher of the Globe and a descendent of Charles H. Taylor, the Globe’s first publisher in 1873, describes as the “secular slide that’s taking place in the newspaper business.”

And we get that the Globe is not immune. Weekday circulation, which stood at 323,983 for the six months ending Sept. 30, 2008, has been sinking steadily over the last decade, along with ad revenues. Five hundred union jobs have disappeared at the Globe since 2000. Losses are mounting: $50 million last year, according to published reports, and likely much more in 2010.

“I’m in the same business of trying to make budgets work,” Mayor Menino points out, reasonably, “and it’s very difficult these days when you don’t have the revenues to match your need.”

He’s right, of course. But there’s another factor here that might make us yearn for a little more righteous indignation on the part of our mayor. I’m referring to the involvement of a certain newspaper from a certain city. The New York Times Company (NYT) bought the Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993, and later added a 17% stake in two other Boston heirlooms, the Red Sox and Fenway Park.

While the Times recently put its piece of the Red Sox up for sale, so far, at least, it’s not talking about shutting down the team. That would get us roiled up, for sure. But is the Globe any less precious?

Former General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) CEO Jack Welch approached the Times a few years ago and asked if the Globe was for sale. Welch says he never made an actual offer. Whatever price he had in mind for the Globe plus the Times’ stake in the Red Sox, Fenway Park and New England Sports Network, he insists it wasn’t anywhere near the $600 million figure that was tossed around back then.

“I think the New York Times is being unfairly battered for the price they turned down from us because they never had that price,” says Welch. “That was the fictitious newspaper price. We sent a letter to [Times CEO] Janet Robinson. They wrote back and said they weren’t interested.” They might be now, but Welch has no interest any more in the Globe. “Oh no,” he says. “God no. We’ve moved on.”

So we’re left with the possibility that someone from the one city we hate more than any other might shut down our biggest, most important newspaper.

Bruce Mohl, who worked as a Globe reporter for 30 years and now edits Commonwealth, a Boston-based quarterly, says, “It is easy to see this as a negotiating ploy. Because if I was the New York Times and I was really serious about shutting it down, I think I would come out and say something to the public about why I’m even raising this issue, as opposed to just sort of sitting on my hands and not saying anything.”

“It’s offensive that they don’t even explain themselves,” says Mohl. “It’s not just taking a stance on the Globe, it’s taking a shot at the community, I think, and you’ve got to explain yourself if you’re going to do something like that.” So far, the Times isn’t saying anything.

Taylor, too, has a hard time imagining it would come to that, but, “I wouldn’t want to test it,” he says. “The players involved shouldn’t try to test that question, in my view. I don’t mean just the union players. I mean management and everybody else who’s got a stake in making this thing work.”

The last guy I talked to was Jim O’Shea, former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and former editor of the Los Angeles Times. O’Shea was forced out of his job at the L.A. Times last year when he wouldn’t agree to carry out newsroom cuts ordered by his publisher. O’Shea is at Harvard on a fellowship this year, so he reads the Globe now. The Times’ “threat is just that,” he says, “a threat. I think they’re trying to get more money out of the place and that’s what every newspaper is doing these days.”

On the other hand, says O’Shea, this is “a company that is in New York, has a national newspaper, and it’s basically fighting to preserve quality journalism. And their back is against the wall because of the debt they took on and the downturn in the economy. So I’m sure they are going around to all their properties, including the one in New York, and asking for cost savings.”

“But I’m sure that it’s also true,” he said, “if you ask [Times publisher] Arthur Sulzberger, ‘What’s your No. 1 interest?’ he’s going to tell you, ‘It’s the New York Times.’ Because that’s the franchise. That’s the one that he’s going to want to see survive. And if others have to go in the process, they will go.” To top of page
First Published: April 8, 2009: 11:14 AM ET

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http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/08/news/companies/whitford_globe.fortune/index.htm

Boston.com
The Associated Press
AP sources: Obama wants Fed to be finance supercop

By Anne Flaherty, Associated Press Writer | May 9, 2009

WASHINGTON –The Federal Reserve could become the supercop for “too big to fail” companies capable of causing another financial meltdown under a proposal being seriously considered by the White House.

The Obama administration told industry officials on Friday that it was leaning toward making such a recommendation, according to officials who attended a private one-hour meeting between President Barack Obama’s economic advisers and representatives from about a dozen banks, hedge funds and other financial groups.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other officials made it clear they were not inclined to divide the job among various regulators as has been suggested by industry and some federal regulators. Geithner told the group that one organization needs to be held responsible for monitoring systemwide risk.

“Committees don’t make decisions,” said Geithner, according to one participant.

Officials from the Treasury Department and National Economic Council, which hosted the meeting, told participants that the Fed was considered the most likely candidate for the job, according to several officials who attended or were briefed on the discussions.

The administration officials said a legislative proposal would likely be sent to Capitol Hill in June with the expectation the House Financial Services Committee, led by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., would consider the measure before the Independence Day recess.

The officials requested anonymity because the meeting had not been publicly announced and they were not authorized to discuss it.

A Treasury Department statement provided to The Associated Press on Friday confirmed Geithner’s position that he wants a “single independent regulator with responsibility for systemically important firms and critical payment and settlement systems.”

A spokesman said Geithner also is open to creating a council to “coordinate among the various regulators, including the systemic risk regulator.”

The Fed itself hasn’t taken a position on whether it should have the job, although Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the Fed would have to be involved in any effort to identify and resolve systemwide risk.

© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

By ANDREW VANACORE – 2 days ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Weighing in for the first time on the future of The Boston Globe, New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said Thursday he hopes to cut the newspaper’s expenses enough to avoid having to shut it down.

“We hope to place this great newspaper on a path to sustainability,” Sulzberger said at the Times Co. annual shareholder meeting. He batted away specific questions on the Globe’s fate.

The recession — and the advertising downturn that began at many newspapers years before — have pushed the Globe deep into the red. The newspaper had an operating loss of $50 million last year and is on track for a loss of $85 million in 2009.

That has prompted the Times Co., which bought the Globe in 1993, to threaten to pull the plug on the newspaper if it can’t get employee unions to agree to concessions that would cut the company’s annual expenses by $20 million.

“Of all our properties, The Boston Globe has been most dramatically affected by the secular and cyclical forces that are roiling the entire media industry,” Sulzberger said. “More needs to be done to align the Globe’s costs and revenues.”

Times executives have not specified the Globe’s costs or explained how $20 million in concessions can save a newspaper losing more money than that. The Globe’s management this week rejected a proposal from union officials that negotiations be held publicly.

The idea that Boston could lose the 137-year-old newspaper has provoked angry reactions. Employees, union representatives and civic leaders are expected at a rally for the Globe at Fanueil Hall in Boston on Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, some Times Co. shareholders expressed frustration with the decline in the company’s stock. Shares have fallen from a 2002 peak of over $50 to about $5.

David Norton, the company’s senior vice president for human resources, pointed out that executives are being paid less this year than last, after not having a salary raise in “multiple years.”

In response to a question about whether the Times Co. board had any plans to buy out shareholders, Sulzberger said “we have no plans to take this company private.”

The meeting came two days after the company reported a first-quarter loss of $74.5 million. With advertisers continuing to pull back, revenue dropped 19 percent in the first quarter, and Chief Executive Janet Robinson said the current quarter looks about as bleak.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.