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A couple of weeks back, I reported in this space that my bosses in the Creative Loafing chain of alt-weeklies cut my pay to ease the company’s cash crunch. Seemed like the right thing to do: The pay cuts affected the top people at corporate plus the “publishing teams”—-editors, publishers, top ad people—-at the various papers themselves. Better to extract some cash from the top earners than to lay off reporters.
Now I’m wondering why the cuts were necessary to begin with: Our company’s market value, I learn this evening, is going through the roof. That’s according to a hired “valuator” who gave testimony in Creative Loafing’s ongoing bankruptcy case in Tampa. Here’s the scoop on this valuation thing, as reported by CL’s own Wayne Garcia:
Creative Loafing’s valuation expert, Michael Mard of Tampa’s Financial Valuation Group of Florida, testified through all of Tuesday afternoon about his assessment that the chain absorbed most of its losses and revenue declines before its Sept. 29, 2008, Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. He put the value of the company at $7 million on Sept. 30; $12 million on Dec. 31, 2008; and $13 million by February of this year.
Holy cow—-in the middle of the greatest financial crisis in however many decades, and the greatest biz-model crisis ever to affect newspapers, our very own company has nearly doubled in value. Quick—someone call Romenesko!