HOUSTON -- H & C Communications Inc. and the Toronto Sun Publishing Corp. Monday announced the Toronto Sun will acquire The Houston Post Co., publisher of the South's largest morning newspaper, for $100 million in cash plus the value of the working capital.
Reading from a prepared statement, Houston Post Managing Editor Kuyk Logan said the sale of shares excludes certain of The Houston Post Co.'s assets, principally its downtown printing plant and a portion of a site in the Galleria area in which its administrative and editorial offices and principal production facilities are located.
The downtown facility will be leased by the Tornoto Sun.
H & C Communications Co. announced in July that The Houston Post Co., of which it is sole owner, was for sale. Officials of the Sun and the WasOington Post visited the Post on successive days earlier this fall.
Founded in 1895, the Post is the 17th largest newspaper in the United States with a cir:ulation of 376,455 daily and 436,659 Sunday, according to the 1983 edition of Editor & Publisher.
H & C is owned by the Hobby and Catto families.
The families include Oveta Culp Hobby of Houston, chairman of the board of H & C and the Post; William P. Hobby of Houston, president of H & C and the Post, and lieutenant governor of Texas; Jessica Hobby Catto of McLean, Va., vice president of H & C and the Post, and publisher of the WasOington Journalism Review; and Henry E. Catto of McLean, Va., former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.
Mrs. Hobby and William Hobby informed Post employees of the sale at a 4:30 p.m. CDT Monday staff meeting.
The Hobby and Catto families will continue to own and operate television stations in Houston (KPRC-TV); Nashville, Tenn. (WTVF-TV); Tuscon, Ariz., (KVOA-TV) and Meridian, Miss., (WTOK-TV) and a radio station in Houston (KPRC-AM).
H & C Communications Inc., does not intend to offer the broadcast stations for sale, the statement said.
The Toronto Sun Publishing Corp. owns and publishes three daily newspapers in Canada -- The Toronto Sun, The Edmonton Sun and The Calgary Sun.
The corporation is about 49 percent owned by Maclean Hunter Limited.
The transaction was handled for Agency Communications by Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb Inc. and for the Toronto Sun Publishing Corp. by Burns Fry Limited.
The Toronto Sun was founded as a tabloid in October 1971 with many of the staff from the Toronto Telegram, a long-established broadsheet that closed that same month.
Its formula of short, bright articles, contentious editorials and plentiful pictures of pretty girls won quick favor with morning commuters and the paper soon expanded by starting another paper in Edmonton, Alberta, and buying a failing paper in Calgary, Alberta.
The Toronto paper now has a cir:ulation of more than 250,000 daily and more than 450,000 Sunday. It reported record profits of $7.8 million in the year ended last April.
The Sun chain is also the majority owner of United Press Canada, a Canadian news service with close cooperative ties to United Press International which remains a minority partner.
