【Part 1】早知今日，会有当初的收购吗？

EMCEE: Thank you, gentlemen. And now Sam Zell will be in a conversation with Joanne Lipman.
主持人：谢谢，各位绅士们！下面我们有请Sam Zell和Joanne Lipman开始对话。

JOANNE LIPMAN: All right. Welcome, Sam Zell. It’s great to have you here. Thanks very much. You barely need introducing, but a quick recap. Sam, of course, made his reputation buying up distressed real estate, earning himself the nickname, “The Grave Dancer.” In his more recent incarnation as a media mogul, that nickname might be more apt than ever. Last year, Sam, of course, bought the Tribune Company, which owns newspapers and local television stations, for $13 billion. Since then, the newspaper industry, as we all know, has been in a free fall, and Tribune properties, which include the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and the Orlando Sentinel, have also been in a free fall, along with the rest of the industry. And so it’s apropos that we talk with Sam today. And everybody here wants to know the same thing, which is: If you knew then what you know now, would you have made this deal?
JOANNE LIPMAN: 好，欢迎Sam Zell。很高兴今天你能来到这里。非常感谢。你都不需要我再多做介绍了，当然，Sam在房地产行业中树立了自己的名声和威望，并赢得了“坟墓舞者”这一 雅号。现在他转身成为媒体巨头，也许这一雅号用来形容现在的Sam更为贴切。去年，Sam以13亿美元的价格收购了Tribune公司——该公司旗下拥有 好几家报纸和地方电视台。正如我们所知，从那以后，报业开始了自由落体运动，Tribune旗下包括洛杉矶时报、芝加哥论坛报、巴尔的摩太阳报、奥兰多哨 兵报在内的报纸及其他产业也同样难以幸免。因此这也是为何今天我们和Sam在这里进行探讨。此刻这儿的每一个人都想知道的同一件事情，就是：早知有今天的 局面，当初你还会做这一笔收购吗？

SAM ZELL: Well, obviously, the newspaper business and advertising, generally, has gone off a cliff. And it didn’t go off a cliff in October or September. It went off the cliff in January. When we looked at the historical numbers, we saw an average erosion of about 3 percent. At the time we underwrote the transaction, we used a 6 percent erosion.  And the last time I checked, 19 percent erosion is bigger than 6.
Sam Sell：好的，很显然，大多数报纸的行情和广告都已经掉下了悬崖。而且，它不是在今年10月或者9月才开始 掉的，而是在今年1月便已经开始。回看媒体过往历史数据，我们看到下降的速度大概是3%，我们在确定财务细目的时候，我们使用的数字是6%，而在我最近一 次的数据核对中，我发现这个数字是19%，比 6%要多得多。

JOANNE: Yeah.
Jonne:的确。

SAM: And so it’s just a whole new ballgame. Just like if you asked the guy would you have stepped on the tracks if you’d known the train was coming, the answer is no. But once the train is here, you’ve got to deal with it.
Sam：所以，情况完全不一样了。就像是你问一个人，如果知道明火车就要开过来了是否还会走在铁轨上一样，答案当然是No。而一旦火车已然在这里了，你就不得不去面对它。

JOANNE: Right. Would you actually have gone into the newspaper industry, or would you simply have wanted to adjust the price accordingly?
Jonne：没错。那么你是否会因此深入报业，或者你仅仅只是想要相应地保住当初收购时候的价值而已？

SAM: I don’t think that I ever woke up in the morning and said, “I want to own a newspaper.” I think that the attraction to the Tribune deal was the ability to put the deal together, to apply a business patina to what has historically been a nonbusiness business, and ultimately test the thesis as to whether or not there is a place for the newspaper in the 21st century.
Sam ：我并不是在某个早晨醒来忽然一拍脑袋说，“我想要拥有一份报纸”。我想我当初之所以看中了Tribune这笔交易，很重要原因是，给一直以来作为一项非商业性目的的事业加上商业色彩，并最终来检验报纸在21世纪能否保有一席之地，这两者可以在这一桩买卖中结合起来。

(未完待续)