Hedge fund Alden Global wants to sink its teeth into another newspaper chain

Anguish befell newsrooms across the country Monday morning yet again, for Alden Global Capital is back in the deal markets.

Months after the hedge fund’s widely watched and fraught pursuit of Tribune Publishing—the parent company of newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun—Alden, which has taken an aggressive cost-cutting strategy to the newspapers it owns that has earned it the title “vulture capitalists,” has made an offer to take over Lee Enterprises, the publicly traded owner of newspapers across the country including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Omaha World-Herald, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch, among others.

In a letter to the Davenport, Iowa-based newspaper chain’s board, Alden wrote that Lee “would be in a stronger position to maximize its resources and realize strategic value that enhances its operations and supports its employees in their important work serving local communities.” The hedge fund offered to buy Lee for $24 per share in an all-cash $142 million deal. The stock promptly surged on the news, ending the trading day up more than 26%. It’s up another 2.5% in early trading Tuesday.

While small, the bid is significant in more ways than not. For one, it signals that Alden is not backing down from its yearslong effort to build a portfolio of newspapers that rivals the very biggest—even just a few months on the heels of its acquisition of Tribune Publishing, which pushed the hedge fund into the national spotlight. The other is that journalists at Lee papers, should Alden prove out to be successful, are likely bound to see a series of cuts and budget reductions just as other now-Alden-owned papers have, including potential buyouts, layoffs, and shrunken offices. It’s a pattern that has made Alden plenty of enemies and skeptics in and out of newsrooms in the years since its strategy first came to light at the Denver Post. (If you’re interested in better understanding Alden and its local news efforts, you should read The Altantic’s October story on the firm by McKay Coppins.)

The hedge fund justifies its newspaper-gobbling-up-and-cost-cutting activities by pointing to the fact that it is the one buying the newspapers when no one else is. It’s not necessarily wrong, either. For instance, a campaign launched by Chicago Tribune staffers last year to find a white-knight savior who could buy the paper themselves failed, leading to Alden’s eventual acquisition. The news business has proven to be one that has seemingly befuddled more people than not. But the journalists working for Alden-owned publications say the hedge fund’s cuts “worsen working conditions and do real damage to our democracy,” as Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Pratt tweeted Monday.

How Lee responds to Alden’s courtship remains to be seen. In a statement issued Monday, the company said its board will “carefully review” the proposal. But one thing is clear: The hedge fund is apart of a new class of media barons that is showing no signs of going away any time soon.

THE “REAL-WORLD METAVERSE.” While the company formerly known as Facebook pushes to build a digital world with the help of virtual reality, Pokémon GO developer Niantic, which specializes in augmented reality technology, wants to build a version of the metaverse that connects human beings in real life. “Unlike a sci-fi metaverse, a real-world metaverse will use technology to improve our experience of the world as we’ve known it for thousands of years,” founder and CEO John Hanke said earlier this year, according to TechCrunch. Now, Coatue seems to be buying into its vision, too. On Monday, Niantic revealed that it had raised $300 million from the global investment manager at a $9 billion valuation.

A PROGRAMMING NOTE: It’s been a pleasure to take the Term Sheet wheel for the last two days. Rey Mashayekhi will be back with you tomorrow ahead of the long weekend, so send all things deals to rey.mashayekhi@fortune.com. And, don’t worry, Lucinda will be back in your inboxes soon.

Declan Harty
@declanharty
declan.harty@fortune.com

VENTURE DEALS

- MoonPay, a Miami cryptocurrency company, has raised $555 million as part of a Series A financing round, raising its post-money valuation to $3.4 billion. The investment was led by Tiger Global and Coatue, and included participation from Blossom Capital, Thrive Capital, Paradigm, and NEA. 

- Impossible Foods, the plant-based meat company based in Redwood City, Calif., has closed on a $500 million funding round that was led by Mirae Asset Global Investments.

- LTK, a Dallas-based company that runs an influencer marketing platform, has raised a $300 million investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 at a $2 billion valuation.  

- Verbit, a New York-based company that uses artificial intelligence for trascription and captioning purposes, has closed a $250 million Series E funding round. Led by Third Point Ventures, the round included additional investments from Sapphire Ventures, More Capital, Disruptive AI, Vertex Growth, 40North, Samsung Next, and TCP.

- WatchBox, a Philadelphia-based e-commerce company specializing in luxury watches, raised $165 million in its latest round of funding. The Radcliff Companies and The Spruce House Partnership led the round, and were joined by CMIA Capital Partners, as well as others.

- SWORD Health, the New York-based virtual physical therapy provider, has raised $163 million of Series D funding that was led by Sapphire Ventures. Other new investors who joined in the round included Sozo Ventures, Willoughby Capital, ADQ, and Localglobe. An additional $26 million raised in a secondary round propelling SWORD's valuation to $2 billion.

- Vercel, the San Francisco-based company that created open-source development framework Next.js, has raised $150 million in Series D funding at a valuation of $2.5 billion. The round was led by GGV Capital, and included participation from Accel, Bedrock Capital, CRV, Geodesic Capital, Greenoaks Capital, GV, 8VC, Flex Capital, Latacora, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Global, and SV Angel.

- Luma Health, a patient engagement platform company based in San Francisco, has raised $130 million in a Series C round led by FTV Capital.

- Rescale, a San Francisco high-performance cloud company, has raised $105 million in an expanded Series C round that included at least 20 investors. A valuation was not disclosed. 

- Neurophth Therapeutics, a Wuhan, China-based genomic medicines company, has closed a more than 460 milion Series C financing round that was co-led by CMG-SDIC Capital and Sequoia Capital China. 

- Ieso Group, a U.K. digital mental healthcare company, has closed a $53 million Series B financing round that was led by Morningside. Sony Innovation Fund, IPO Group, Molten Ventures, and Ananda Social Venture Fund all participated in the investment as well. 

- CoreStack, a software-as-a-service provider based out of Bellevue, Wash., has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round. The investment was led by Avatar Growth Capital, and included participation from Dallas Venture Capital, Iron Pillar, and others. 

- New Culture, a San Leandro, Calif.-based cheese company, has raised $25 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Ahren Innovation Capital and CPT Capital.  

- ORIGYN Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit specializing in NFT authentication, has raised $20 million of strategic funding. Investors included in the raise were Bill Ackman's Table Management, Polychain Capital, Paris Hilton, Coinko, Vectr Ventures, Carter Reum, Div Turakhia, GD10 Ventures, among others.

- Conduktor, which runs an enterprise Apache Kafka platform based in Jackson, Wyoming, raised $20 million of Series A funding. Led by Accel, the round also included investmetns from Frontline Ventures and Aglaé Ventures. 

 

PRIVATE EQUITY

- Advent International agreed to acquire Caldic, a Netherlands-based chemicals solutions provider, from Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Armand Agra, a Founders Group of Food Companies subsidiary, acquired Seattle Fish Company, a Denver, Colo.-based wholesale fish and seafood product company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Big Brand Tire & Service, a Percheron Capital portfolio firm, acquired American Tire Depot, a Vernon, Calif.-based tire retailer. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Godspeed Capital acquired Ascent Engineering Group, a Roanoke, Va.-based engineering and consulting firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Littlejohn has acquired American Health Staffing Group. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

EXIT

- Dominus Capital has agreed to acquire Consolidated Equipment Group from Hanover Partners and Northstar Capital. 

 

OTHER

- Cowen has agreed to buy advisory firm Portico Capital Advisors for a mix of cash and stock. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

- SVB Leerink, the investment banking division of SVB Financial, is in talks to acquire MoffettNathanson, per Bloomberg. 

- Life360 plans to acquire finding-technology company Tile, which raised $40 million in debt from Capital IP earlier this year, in a deal valued at $205 million. 

 

IPOs

- UAE asset manager and investment banking company Shuaa Capital is weighing an IPO in Dubai for two of its portfolio companies, Stanford Marine Group and NCM Investment, per Bloomberg.

- Longfor Group, a Chinese real estate developer, is weighing an IPO in Hong Kong that could raise around $1 billion, per Bloomberg.

- Cloud Village, a Chinese music streaming service provider, filed for an IPO in Hong Kong that could raise up to $451 million. Cloud Village is a division of NetEase.

- Arctic Wolf, an Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based cybersecurity startup, is in talks with financial advisors for an IPO, according to Reuters. Viking Global Investors and Owl Rock back the firm.

- Bionomics Limited, an Australian allosteric ion channel modulator development company, filed for an IPO in the U.S. The company posted a loss of $6.5 million in the 12 months ending in June 2021 and has yet to post revenue. BVF Partners and Apeiron Investment Group back the firm. 

- Applied Blockchain, a Dallas, Tex.-based crypto mining company, filed for an IPO. The company reported a net loss of $568,000 in the 12 months ending in May 2021 and did not post any revenue.

- Exeger, a Swedish solar technology firm, is weighing an IPO in Stockholm or the U.S., per Bloomberg. SoftBank backs the firm.

- Ardian, a French private equity firm, weighing an IPO, per Bloomberg.

- Al Habtoor Group, a hotel company and property group in Dubai, is weighing an IPO in the UAE, per Bloomberg.

 

SPAC

- Manscaped, a San Diego-based men’s grooming startup, plans to go public via a merger with Bright Lights Acquisition Corp., a SPAC. A deal values the company at around $1 billion. Channing Tatum, Endeavor Group, Signia Venture Partners, Saban Capital Group, and Guggenheim Investments back the firm.

 

PEOPLE

- Race Capital has added Richard Lam to its team as general partner. Lam was previously at the Ontario Teacher Pension Plan.