Sam Zell insists he's a builder, not a breakup artist or an investor who flips companies to make a fast buck.
"Every company I've ever been involved with I have built," said the real estate maverick, who Monday agreed to take Tribune Co. private in an $8.2-billion deal. "We didn't do this deal to figure out what to get rid of."
Yet Friday night, Zell and his wife, Helen, were to have dinner with music mogul David Geffen, who has been angling to peel the Los Angeles Times away from Tribune, its corporate parent and owner of 10 other newspapers and 23 TV stations.
Zell said Friday that he regarded the encounter as largely social. Geffen had promised to invite an old college roommate of Zell's who has worked in the recording industry. "So this is a chance to see someone we haven't seen in 45 years," Zell said.
The 65-year-old investor seems in no hurry to sell. "There may be some structure for avoiding the pitfalls" of a spinoff of The Times from Tribune -- including the heavy tax bill it might generate -- but the idea that Zell is purchasing Tribune to slice it up piece by piece "is one of the great conspiratorial theories," he said.
Zell made his remarks in his first interview with The Times since the deal was announced. Seated in a conference room at a private terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, he was trim and relaxed, dressed casually, and characteristically, in an open-neck sport shirt and blue corduroy suit.
His blue eyes sparkled as he recalled successful deals of the past and the annual motorcycle journey he undertakes with a cadre of friends. (This spring, it starts in Trieste, Italy, and continues down the Dalmatian coast toward Albania.)
But his gaze could harden in anger or reproach in an instant. "You haven't done your homework," he would growl at a reporter who displayed an unfamiliarity with one or another of his transactions.
He relished the chance to repeat that his governing principle in business was to look for a contrarian opportunity. "If you follow my history as a businessman, it's looking at things differently," he said. "When everybody says, 'It's going to be X,' I'm more than willing to bet my money that it's going to be Y."
Zell made a fortune in real estate -- and by turning around distressed assets. He mentions his 1985 acquisition of Itel Corp., a lessor of rail cars and containers. The business was in a prolonged slump. "I can't even describe to you how a banker responded when you told him you were in the rail-car business in 1985. One of them said, 'Look, if you want sympathy I'll give you a charitable gift, but don't come to me with rail cars.' "
