Vice Media files for bankruptcy ahead of sale
American-Canadian youth broadcaster expects to have new ownership after filing for bankruptcy protection in New York.
- Published by David Knox
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American-Canadian youth broadcaster Vice Media has formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York, to facilitate its sale.
The company listed both assets and liabilities in the range of US$500 million to US$1 billion, according to the Reuters news service.
Vice’s brands include Vice News, Vice TV, Vice Studios, Pulse Films, Virtue, Refinery29 and i-D.
The company’s biggest creditor, Fortress Investment Group, will make up part of a new ownership. Also including Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital, the lending consortium will invest around US$225M as a credit bid for almost all of the company’s assets.
The sale is expected to complete in about two to three months. Day to day operations remain unaffected by the bankruptcy filing, with more than US$20M from the lending consortium, plus revenues from its businesses, “will be more than sufficient to fund the business throughout the sale process.”
“Vice serves a huge global audience with a unique brand of news, entertainment and lifestyle content,” said Dixon and Lokhandwala, VICE’s Co-CEOs said in a statement. “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 for young people and such a valued partner to brands, agencies and platforms.
“We will have new ownership, a simplified capital structure and the ability to operate without the legacy liabilities that have been burdening our business. We look forward to completing the sale process in the next two to three months and charting a healthy and successful next chapter at Vice.”
SBS has already lost Vice News Tonight, while a spokesperson said: “There are currently no impacts for SBS. The SBS VICELAND channel is a curated mix of programming including content SBS selects from Vice, alongside a range of other suppliers, and we have the flexibility to respond to programming and scheduling changes when needed.”
Australian Vice staff have also been impacted.
Nine’s youth arm Pedestrian Group also draws upon Vice content.
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One Response
Looks like Fortress and Soros who had invested in Vice are going to take over Vice. Vice’s problem was that while it successfully targeted young people for their cable channel, when they expanded into online streaming and websites they only way to make money was from targeted advertising, and to do that they needed to pay for the consumer data that Google, Facebook and others control. The tech companies made a mint, Vice ended up $225m in debt trying to get large enough to be profitable.