Unlikely pair bid for LA Times

Eli Broad made his fortune building affordable homes for Southern Californians, while Ron Burkle made his by filling their pantries with groceries.

On Wednesday, they joined in a bid to buy the Los Angeles Times' parent, Tribune Co. If successful, the two billionaires with no newspaper experience might pull off one of their most audacious deals yet.

Broad and Burkle have spent millions cutting separate swaths across the landscape of Southern California arts, culture and philanthropy. Their bid is likely to be countered by another local billionaire, David Geffen, who is expected to make a separate offer for the newspaper.

Like Geffen, who made his fortune in music and movies, Broad and Burkle have egos to match their accomplishments. Some who know them question whether they could work well together as partners, prompting speculation they would divvy Tribune's holdings of newspapers, broadcast outlets and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

"The obvious question on everyone's mind is where does the L.A. Times end up in all this? In whose hands and under whose direction?" said Steve Soboroff, president of Playa Vista, a former Los Angeles mayoral candidate and one of 20 community leaders who in September wrote to Tribune Co. protesting its plans for cutbacks at The Times. "There are all kinds of possibilities."

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who is an acquaintance of Burkle's and hikes with Broad in the Santa Monica Mountains almost every Sunday, said he was not surprised to hear about the pair's proposal.

Buying Tribune would be "an interesting game," said Riordan, a multimillionaire venture capitalist who restructured Mattel Co. before going into politics.

"The part that would be fun would be selling off the parts of Tribune and being left with the L.A. Times," he said. "But then what would you do?"

Riordan doubts that Broad and Burkle, both of whom have strong personalities, would be interested in running The Times as co-owners.

Two people who know both men in business and civic circles agreed. They described Broad and Burkle as "control freaks" but asked that their names not be used because they didn't want to antagonize the billionaires.

"There is no way they are gonna live together running that newspaper," said one, who described them as "not friends but not enemies" either.

Click on the headline for an L.A. Times story on the Chicago Tribune Co. bidding.