Chandlers' Interest in L.A. Times Now Strictly Business

Members of the Chandler family declined to speak publicly for this article. Tribune had no comment on the Chandlers.

The two family trusts, originally a Depression-era emergency fund for Harry and Marian Chandler's eight children, provide wealth and income for today's Chandlers, who receive dividend checks from their investments.

"The only way the family could get its money was by the payment of dividends, and if the business wasn't performing, they weren't going to get a lot of dividends," said David Laventhol, a former publisher of the L.A. Times and former president of Times Mirror. "They couldn't just go up to the treasurer of the company and say, 'Write me a check for a million dollars.' "

The Chandler trusts are controlled by a board that has little interaction with family beneficiaries, many of whom receive only a yearly audit report with their dividend checks, according to a source familiar with family business who spoke on condition of anonymity because of continuing dealings with the Chandlers. Despite their combined wealth of at least $3 billion, no single member or small group has the resources to mount a buyout for Tribune, even combined with other investors.

The Chandlers are among three bidders for Tribune. Their offer would spin off Tribune's broadcast unit into a new business and take the newspapers private with equity backing that would pay the Chandlers for about half of their investment in the company. The Tribune board will either accept one of the bids or restructure the company on its own. Tribune says the decision will be made by the end of March.

The four key players connected to the family trusts are Warren "Spud" Williamson, a Chandler cousin and director of the trusts; William Stinehart Jr., a Los Angeles lawyer and member of the Tribune board; Thomas Unterman, the family's longtime financial adviser; and Jeffrey Chandler, a Chandler cousin and Tribune director.

Williamson is a philanthropist, horse enthusiast and political conservative who has given millions of dollars to such Southern California institutions as the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He sits on the five-person L.A. Times board that also includes three Tribune appointees. The board approves the choice of publisher.

The Chandlers' chief legal representative to Tribune is Stinehart, the longtime family lawyer and retired partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles. Stinehart forbade his high school from showing a L.A. Times reporter his 1961 yearbook featuring him, the paper wrote last year.

Unterman, who is not related to the Chandlers, is the family's top lieutenant and a former Tribune director. Managing partner of private-equity firm Rustic Canyon Partners, he is described by some as having a casual mien that belies a fierce business acumen. Unterman was the primary architect of such Times Mirror deals as the sale of its cable assets to Cox Enterprises for $2.3 billion in 1994 and its merger with Tribune in 2000.

In addition to newspapering, much of the Chandler trusts' wealth came from real estate. For most of the past century, for example, the family owned a California ranch one-third the size of Rhode Island. In 1936, the Chandlers struck oil on the property. The family's push to bring water to Los Angeles is fictionalized in the 1974 movie "Chinatown."