Categories: OLD Media Moves

Hedge fund takes aim at TheStreet.com

Hedge fund Spear Point has set its eyes on financial news service TheStreet.com after gaining a controlling take in news site Salon, reports Keith Kelly of The New York Post.

Kelly writes, “‘We do think there is room for consolidation, especially in the smaller end of the market,’ said Ron Bienvenu, managing partner of New Orleans-based Spear Point, which has less than $100 million under management.

“’TheStreet, I think, lacks compelling vision,’ said Bienvenu. He holds just under 5 percent of the stock of TheStreet and is still smarting that his pick for a board seat, Lex Fenwick, a former top executive at Bloomberg and Dow Jones, last spring was disqualified on a technicality from a seat on the company’s board.

“‘We’re very frustrated,’ said Bienvenu. ‘We don’t like it when the chairman runs the company like a personal fiefdom.’

“Salon, meanwhile, held its first board meeting on Tuesday following a move by Spear Point on Friday to inject about $1 million into the struggling digital company to gain control of its board.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.