In a move described as an effort toward better corporate governance, Gary Pruitt, the chairman and chief executive of The McClatchy Co., has resigned from a group of trusts that controls much of the voting power in the company.
Pruitt had been a co-trustee of four separate trusts controlling 12.5 million shares of Class B shares - the stock through which the McClatchy family essentially controls the Sacramento-based owner of The Bee. Pruitt isn't a family member.
Those shares constitute the bulk of the family's holdings in the company. Although the family owns about a third of the company's total shares, the Class B holdings give it 80 percent of the voting control.
Pruitt's resignation was disclosed in a filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He stepped aside because of the company's desire to seek "improved governance," McClatchy Treasurer Elaine Lintecum said Saturday.
"It seemed better governance to break up the roles," she said. "It was better to have him not have so many hats."
He was replaced by Leroy Barnes Jr., a non-family member who has been a McClatchy director since 2000. The other three co-trustees are two family members, William Ellery McClatchy and William B. McClatchy, and William K. Coblentz, a board member and non-family member.
As McClatchy has struggled financially in the past two years and its stock price has plunged, Pruitt has talked about some day taking the company private - buying back all the shares and removing McClatchy from the ranks of publicly traded companies. But he has said going private is a long way off because the company is already heavily in debt. Lintecum said his resignation from the trusts isn't tied to any kind of financial restructuring.
"It's not a precursor to anything," she said.
McClatchy's stock closed Friday at $3.66, up 20 cents, on the New York Stock Exchange. It has lost 84 percent of its value in the past year.
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