From BBC News:
Conrad Black, chief executive of the company that owns the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers, is to step down. The announcement came as the company, Hollinger International, said it was considering putting itself up for sale. The move follows an internal inquiry which found that Lord Black and other executives had received more than $32m (£19m) in unauthorised payments. Hollinger said Lord Black would leave his post on Friday, but would remain as non-executive chairman.
The company said the payments had not been authorised by its audit committee or its board of directors. About $7.2m was paid to Lord Black himself, Hollinger added. Hollinger, whose other newspapers include the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post, had already been under fire from shareholders because of its complex corporate structure. Revealing the existence of the unauthorised payments last Friday, the company also said it was delaying the release of its quarterly results.
Hollinger added that its board has also accepted the resignations - with immediate effect - of president and chief operating officer David Radler, vice president Mark Kipnis, and board member Peter Atkinson. It said Lord Black, Mr Radler and Mr Atkinson had agreed to repay the company the full amount of the unauthorised payments they received, plus interest, no later than 1 June 2004. Lord Black has insisted the unauthorised payments were above-board. Described as "noncompete" payments, they were paid by buyers of Hollinger International newspapers to prevent executives from getting back into the same market.
Yet the company said officials had been unable to produce paperwork showing that its audit committee approved some of the payments to executives. And other newspaper industry officials have said it is unusual for such payments to go to executives from the company itself. Lord Black said: "The present structure of the group clearly must be renovated. As the strategic process proceeds we will continue to cooperate entirely with the special committee to resolve corporate governance concerns." Canadian-born Conrad Black has often been described as a mini-Rupert Murdoch. A right winger, he is also a committed anglophile. Born in Toronto in 1944, he went on to build up a portfolio of Canadian newspapers, before moving across the Atlantic in the 1980s. He became Lord Black of Crossharbour, and took up a seat in the House of Lords in 2000 after renouncing his Canadian citizenship. Hollinger said he will continue in his role as chairman of its wholly owned subsidiary The Telegraph Group, the immediate publisher of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph papers. It was Black himself who earlier this year agreed to appoint a special committee to review the unauthorised payments.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3276319.stmMaybe not quite in the same mould as Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski but certainly from the same finishing school....
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