MORGAN: TIMES UP

The wild ride is over.

Morgan Stanley’s money-management unit has sold off its entire 7.2 percent stake in the New York Times Co. after nearly two years of increasingly bitter fights between the stakeholder and Times Chairman Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr.

The sell-off by money manager Hassan Elmasry, who has long agitated for change at the Times, sent the already battered stock skidding 2.3 percent, or 43 cents, to a new 10-year low of $18.48 a share.

The New York Times Company did not return calls for comment.

The bombshell sale immediately raised questions on Wall Street about who bought the shares – and whether other large institutional investors that had been critical of Times management would also opt to sell their stakes.

Private Capital Management and T. Rowe Price, the two other shareholders that have opposed the company’s dual-class stock structure and were urging corporate governance changes, declined to comment yesterday.

Bloomberg News, citing “traders with knowledge of the transaction,” said that Morgan Stanley sold a block of 10 million shares for $183 million.

“As a matter of policy, Morgan Stanley Investment Management does not publicly comment on changes in its portfolio,” a spokesman said.

A source close to Elmasry confirmed the stock sale.

Porter Bibb, an analyst at Media Tech Capital Partners, expected Wall Street’s reaction to the stock sale to be worse than it was.

“I thought it would be a firestorm for large institutional shareholders. Although [Times shares] went down on the [Morgan Stanley] news, it didn’t have that precipitous a drop.”

Morgan Stanley began amassing its Times stock in 1996 when it was selling for about $18 a share – roughly the same price at which it was selling yesterday.

In 2002, the stock had peaked at $53 a share.

Elmasry for two years had urged the company to abolish its dual-class stock structure and also lobbied for Sulzberger to split his chairman and publisher duties into two jobs.

The Ochs-Sulzberger family controls 88 percent of the Class-B shares, giving it control of the board.

Elmasry’s pressure did force some moves. The company sold off its TV stations to Oak Hill Capital Partners for $575 million, and Sulzberger and a first cousin, Michael Golden, recently agreed to forgo their seven figure bonuses. But the family wouldn’t budge on demands to drop the dual stock structure, even when faced with increasingly restive shareholders.

After two years of agitation, Elmasry has “clearly lost patience and is frustrated,” said one source with knowledge of the transaction. “He had some influence, but at the end of the day, he thought the money would be better spent investing elsewhere.” [email protected]