West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Some analysts are saying that the mighty New York Times might be headed down the same path as the bankrupt Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.

Hedge fund shareholders, Harbinger Capital Partners Funds and Firebrand Partners own 19% of the NYT Company, and the outlook does not look good. NYT is approximately $1 billion in debt, the result of its move to a new building on Eighth Avenue a couple of years ago.

Harbinger Capital Partners has grown to one of the 15 largest hedge funds, by assets, in America. Firebrand Partners is an operational activist firm that invests in publicly-traded companies whose brand equity represents significant upside relative to their market capitalization.

The NYT Company includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and 15 other daily newspapers.

Alex Akesson

Tags: accredited-investors, boston globe, brand equity, chicago tribune, daily-newspapers, firebrand-partners, fund shareholders, harbinger, harbinger capital partners, hedgeco, international-herald-tribune, los angeles times, market capitalization, new york times, nyt, partners funds, tribune company

Reuters – An activist British hedge fund has taken a 6 percent stake in Washington Mutual Inc as the largest U.S. savings and loan tries to rebound from billions of dollars of mortgage-related losses.

The London-based fund, Toscafund Asset Management, also reported a 5.1 percent stake in Sovereign Bancorp Inc, the second-largest U.S. thrift.

Toscafund revealed the passive stakes in separate filings Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Tags: aftermath, bad-news, bankruptcy-filing, doldrums, finance, firebrand-partners, investment-arm, mayhem, new-marketplace, news-press, taylor-wimpey, trillion