Tribune to sell for $8.2b

Billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell has reached an agreement to buy Tribune Co. in a two-stage deal valued at about $13 billion, the company said yesterday.

The plan calls for spending $8.2 billion, or $34 a share, to buy out shareholders and assuming nearly $5 billion in debt. It would put Zell, a 65-year-old entrepreneur famed for turning around troubled properties, at the helm of the nation's third-largest newspaper chain and one of its largest conglomerations of television stations.

Zell's bid was sweetened this weekend to top a late offer from Los Angeles billionaires Eli Broad and Ron Burkle.

The deal would turn the 160-year-old Tribune and its Chicago Tribune, an economic and political powerhouse in the Midwest, over to a quirky businessman whose previous investments have not had nearly such a high profile. And the deal would effectively free the Chandler family of California -- owners of the Los Angeles Times for more than a century -- from an industry with which they have become disillusioned.