Excerpts: Aurelius Capital Management: The hedge fund that’s keeping Tribune in bankruptcy

• Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, has been in bankruptcy for…well, years. And according to recent reports, it won’t be coming out of Chapter 11 any time soon. So what’s the holdup?
• Basically, it’s two very large lenders versus an incredibly tenacious hedge fund. On one side, we have Oaktree Capital Management and JPMorgan Chase. Oaktree invests heavily in “distressed debt” — it has close to $30 billion of it’s more than $80 billion under management tied up in defaulted or defaulting securities.
• According to Bloomberg, Oaktree along with Tribune’s other “senior creditors” hold around $3.4 billion on a total of $8 billion that Sam Zell borrowed to buy Tribune in 2007.
• For the record, Zell’s buyout took Tribune’s total debt to a staggering $13 billion.

Source: KPCC