Avista buys Star Tribune for $530M

Avista Capital Partners has inked a definitive agreement to acquire the publisher of the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis/St. Paul from The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) for $530 million. The Star Tribune has a daily circulation of more than 360,000 and a Sunday circulation of about 600,000, making them the 14th largest daily paper and the 10th largest Sunday paper in the United States. The senior management team already in place will continue to run the company. The deal is the splashiest to date for Avista Capital, whose founders spun out of DLJ Merchant Banking Partners to launch their own shop in 2005. Following its acquisition of Knight Ridder earlier this year, McClatchy has been selling off newspapers in markets not growing as fast as it would like. www.startribune.com www.avistacap.com