Jordan Bitove wins ownership of Toronto Star and Metroland

Open this photo in gallery:

Jordan Bitove will take complete ownership of Torstar Corp., the parent company of the Toronto Star and Metroland Media Group, as part of a settlement agreement after a bitter falling out with business partner Paul Rivett, according to a statement from the company.

“Paul Rivett and I went into our partnership with the best of intentions, united in our desire to build a more resilient and competitive Torstar,” Mr. Bitove said in the statement. “Areas of disagreement emerged which we were not able to resolve.”

Mr. Rivett will be departing Torstar. “It was my absolute pleasure to have been involved, even briefly, with the storied Star and Metroland organizations,” he said in the statement.

The two businessmen purchased Torstar in 2020 for $60-million through their company NordStar Capital. Owing to their equal partnership, they became deadlocked over business decisions earlier this year and, starting in October, engaged in mediation and arbitration to split up the company’s assets. Those holdings also include a newly launched online casino and sportsbook and a large investment stake in digital-media company VerticalScope Holdings Inc FORA-T.

It was not immediately clear what is happening with NordStar’s other assets, but two sources told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Bitove will retain a stake in VerticalScope. The Globe is not identifying the sources because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Financial terms of the arrangement were not available. Neither Mr. Rivett nor Mr. Bitove responded to a request for comment.

“The work to build a stronger Torstar will continue and my commitment to quality, sustainable journalism remains absolute,” Mr. Bitove said in the statement.

The resolution, effective Thursday, marks a new chapter for the Toronto Star and the end of the brief business relationship between Mr. Rivett, the former president of Fairfax Financial Holdings, and Mr. Bitove, who previously founded an experiential marketing company. When they purchased Torstar, they vowed to implement a turnaround at the company amid a challenging environment for media.

But the two owners repeatedly clashed over the direction of the company. In September, Mr. Rivett filed a court application through holding companies seeking to wind up NordStar. The filing also outlined a broken working relationship and a disagreement about cost-cutting, among others. According to the application, the pair committed to a number of measures to reduce costs at NordStar’s newspaper assets. But Mr. Bitove, who also serves as publisher of the Toronto Star, later refused to carry out the plans at the newspaper.

Open this photo in gallery:

After news of their dispute became public, Mr. Bitove fired back at the assertions in the court application with a statement through communications firm Navigator Ltd., portraying his partner as someone who prefers to “cut costs to the bone, strip the product bare, and shrink newsrooms to extract short-term benefit for shareholders.”

Rather than fight in court, the pair later agreed to resolve the matter privately through mediation and arbitration under J. Douglas Cunningham, a former justice with the Ontario Superior Court.

Now, Mr. Bitove will have the chance to implement his approach unencumbered by his former partner. Both the Toronto Star and the more than 70 titles under community news publisher Metroland face tough prospects. The market for print advertising has shrunk while tech giants such as Google and Facebook have attracted huge amounts of digital ad dollars. The Toronto Star has been pursuing a digital subscription strategy but it remains to be seen whether that approach can offset declines in advertising revenue long-term.

Shortly before their falling out, Mr. Rivett and Mr. Bitove participated in a documentary about the Toronto Star called Viral News, which recounts the newspaper’s coverage of the pandemic. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world because I think this is the greatest job in the world,” Mr. Bitove said in the film, which premiered this month.

Mr. Rivett, meanwhile, said he initially saw the company as a “fixer-upper” and that it took him longer to appreciate the impact and influence of the newspaper on the city.

“Jordan thoroughly loves it,” he said in the film. “I didn’t think I’d actually love it. And I’m not even sure I’d say love, but I feel the importance of it.”