Deadline pressure
Yesterday was the deadline for investors/buyers to put their hands up if they are interested in the Boston Herald and Pat Purcell's sprawling chain of suburban newspapers. Imagine Purcell's financially challenged company combining with The Patriot Ledger of Quincy and The Enterprise of Brockton, two papers Purcell once tried hard to buy himself. Heritage Partners, a Boston private equity firm, is imagining just that.
Heritage Partners, which specializes in buying family-owned businesses and has $1.4 billion under management, confirmed it was among those interested in the Purcell auction. ''We think it is a good property, and we have a lot of respect for Pat and his abilities," said Ross Posner, a Heritage Partners principal. ''The papers have a great position in their communities."
Five years ago, in better times, Purcell made a bid to buy the Ledger and the Enterprise before acquiring his suburban papers from Fidelity Investments. Three years later Heritage Partners bought the Ledger, the Enterprise and 13 smaller community papers for $113 million. (Worth noting: Charles K. Gifford Jr., son of Purcell pal Chad Gifford, is a Heritage Partners executive.)
Purcell did not return my call, and Posner would not discuss a combination of the papers. But a private equity firm, keen on synergy and cost savings, could merge many of the operations while preserving the papers' identities. Could there, for instance, be a single headquarters, and printing plant, for all the papers? And it need not be in Boston. The Boston Herald property, owned separately by the Purcell family, could be a valuable development site.
A Purcell spokeswoman said he was ''encouraged by the interest," and expected a resolution in ''a couple of months." She would not identify potential investors.
Newspaper analyst John Morton was less encouraging. ''It is not a promising investment," says Morton. ''I don't know of a media company that would want to buy it." Morton thinks the most likely investor is another private equity firm to replace the three firms that are cashing out.
Some media companies, however, might be interested in picking off Purcell properties that would fit with their own papers. Among them: the Ottaway division of Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Cape Cod Times and The Standard-Times of New Bedford; Journal Register Co., owner of The Herald News in Fall River and Taunton Gazette; MediaNews Group, owner of the Lowell Sun; and Community Newspaper Holdings, owner of the Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence. All declined to comment or did not return my call.
Upendra Mishra, an Indian entrepreneur in Boston, has another idea for the Herald: turning it into a daily business newspaper for Boston. ''The Boston Herald has to be completely reinvented, and it has to add interesting niche products," says Mishra, who runs the Mishra Group, a public relations firm. He also publishes a national biweekly, the IndUS Business Journal, (circulation 18,000) and India New England (circulation 12,000). Mishra, a longshot, says he is exploring raising money from various minority communities.
Neighborhood news: Peter Berlandi is leaving Bingham McCutchen seven years after he joined the Boston law firm to start Bingham Consulting Group, a successful firm offering political strategy for corporate clients nationwide. Berlandi, who also oversees the firm's investment banking and wealth management units, said he was looking for change and expected to set up shop on his own. Berlandi has no interest in returning to his former life as a political fund-raiser: ''That is the one thing I am not going to do."
The owner of the venerable Back Bay art gallery Haley & Steele fled the country ahead of the police last spring, but not all the galleries are fleeing Newbury Street. Axelle Fine Arts Gallery is opening Dec. 10 in the Haley & Steele space, the third gallery to open on Newbury Street this year. Acclaimed French artist Michel Delacroix will be on hand for the opening of the gallery, one of five owned by his son, Bertrand.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902. 
