Vice Media is getting ready to file for chapter as quickly as throughout the subsequent a number of days, folks acquainted with the matter mentioned, a transfer that will mark a significant fall from grace for a once-hot media startup that was valued at $5.7 billion at its peak.
Vice, whose belongings embrace Vice Information, Vice TV, Refinery29 and Motherboard, has struggled for years to seek out development. The corporate has been trying to promote itself, however a deal hasn’t materialized, The Wall Avenue Journal beforehand reported. Its chief government, Nancy Dubuc, departed earlier this 12 months, and final week the corporate introduced it could be restructuring its information division, ending its Vice World Information Tonight present and shutting down the Vice World Information model.
It stays doable that Vice may discover a purchaser and avert chapter, the folks mentioned.
“Vice Media Group has been engaged in a complete analysis of strategic alternate options and planning,” a spokesman wrote in an announcement Monday. “The corporate, its board, and stakeholders proceed to be centered on discovering one of the best path for the corporate.”
Following a chapter submitting, which the folks count on may come within the subsequent week, Vice would search to promote itself by means of a court-supervised sale course of in chapter, permitting it to stay in enterprise moderately than being bought for components and liquidated, the folks mentioned. Fortress Funding Group, as the most important senior lender to Vice, may take management after Vice exits chapter, except a white-knight purchaser emerges, they mentioned.
The New York Occasions earlier Monday reported that Vice was getting ready to file for chapter.
Vice’s downfall is emblematic of the robust occasions that new media firms that raised cash at sky-high valuations have had as they tried to navigate a tough promoting surroundings the place most advert {dollars} go to Meta Platforms’ Fb and Alphabet’s Google. Final month, BuzzFeed introduced it was closing its information division after it continued to lose cash.
The media firm has been in arrears to lots of its distributors, and just lately obtained a $30 million lifeline from Fortress to assist it get by means of a sale course of, the Journal beforehand reported.