Business

George Soros’ Investment Firm, Others To Buy Vice Media After Bankruptcy

By Harald Dettenborn, CC BY 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13401693

Soros Fund Management (SFM) and other investors will buy Vice Media for about $225 million after the media company filed for bankruptcy protection Monday.

The digital media company was once valued at $5.7 billion, but is now relying on funds from bidders to continue operations until its sale is finalized in the next two to three months, according to a Monday press release. SFM was founded and is chaired by left-wing billionaire and philanthropist George Soros and is the principal asset manager for the Open Society Foundations, of which Soros is the founding chair.

The company filed for bankruptcy Monday morning, according to a filing, after several years of financial troubles and turnover among its leadership. Fortress Investment Group and Monroe Capital are taking over Vice jointly with SFM, according to the the company, though the deal is still subject to higher bids.

“This accelerated court-supervised sale process will strengthen the company and position VICE for long-term growth, thereby safeguarding the kind of authentic journalism and content creation that makes VICE such a trusted brand,” Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala, Vice’s co-chief executives, said in its press release. “We will have new ownership, a simplified capital structure and the ability to operate without the legacy liabilities that have been burdening our business.”

Vice Media owns Vice News, Vice TV, Refinery29 and Motherboard, but has said “substantially all” of its international holdings weren’t part of the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, according to the press release.

Vice Media referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to its press release and declined to comment further.