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Federal regulators are investigating whether California violated securities laws and failed to provide adequate disclosure about its giant public pension fund, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. The Securities and Exchange Commission normally polices companies, but last year it brought its first enforcement action ever against a state, accusing New Jersey of securities fraud for misleading bond investors about the condition of its pension fund. The commission signaled, in its settlement with New Jersey, that it was going to look more broadly at the pension disclosures of states and cities. The fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement...

Ok, Ron, now what? Investor Ron Burkle on Tuesday suffered a double loss in his fight against Barnes & Noble. Shareholders beat back his proposals to elect him and two other director nominees, and his suggestion to raise the threshold for the company’s poison pill that has been the source of tension between Burkle and the bookseller. Burkle is the second-largest holder of Barnes & Noble shares, and so far he isn’t going quietly. In a statement, his Yucaipa Cos. blamed the loss of the shareholder vote on an “insurmountable insider voting advantage” for Barnes & Noble founder Len Riggio...

Speaker Mop & Glo made headlines for her call to investigate opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, but there was something else about her remarks that should have raised your hackles: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we...

Two Cal Poly Pomona professors emeriti have called on the Legislature and Attorney General Jerry Brown to probe flawed investment choices by CalPERS in recent years. Professors Walter Coombs of Claremont and Ralph Shaffer of Covina called for the investigations in an opinion piece published in The Riverside Press Enterprise. To read their full commentary, click here. Here are their ending remarks: It's time for a thorough examination of CalPERS by the state attorney general and the Legislature. Recent investments smack of cronyism and outright conflict of interest. Were investment transactions based on proper research or did certain favored real...

CalPERS has sustained steep declines in the value of its real estate holdings on top of even larger stock market losses. CalPERS made aggressive investments in real estate at the worst possible time, when inflated property values had peaked and were already beginning to decline. The magnitude of the losses almost ensures that CalPERS will raise employer contribution rates. Pension fund officials have warned state and local governments that they may be hit with fee increases of between 2 percent and 5 percent of payroll beginning as early as 2010. If the recession deepens and sales and property taxes continue...

Forbes.com has a lengthy piece that tries to devine whether another catastrophe will deliver a final blow to the economy before recovery starts. CalPERS is mentioned in the piece. John Osbon, one of the experts on Forbes' "Investor Team," says, "I can imagine CalPERS or TIAA-CREF making some announcement that they are cutting benefits and payouts by 30% due to investment losses, non-functioning markets and so on. That would be a real hit with real money." This strikes us as a bit ignorant, since CalPERS pension benefits are guaranteed. The fund can't simply "announce" a cut . . .

Melissa Etheridge sang "Wedding Bell Blues" and Mary J. Blige covered a moving rendition of U2's "One" at Ron Burkle's Greenacres estate at a lavish fund-raiser for the No on 8 campaign, which is a fighting a ban on same-sex marriage. On a stage set up on a portion of Burkle's sprawling back lawn, Etheridge told the crowd that "I believe we are at the very end of this cycle of fear that has been going on and on." About $3.9 million was raised at the Tuesday evening event, and campaign officials say they are closing the fund-raising gap with...

Excerpt - Federal prosecutors charged Raffaello Follieri, an Italian entrepreneur and former business partner of California billionaire Ron Burkle, with funding a lavish lifestyle by using money from a real-estate venture that was supposed to capitalize on his alleged Vatican ties to redevelop surplus Catholic Church properties. ~ snip ~ A criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney in Manhattan Tuesday alleged that Mr. Follieri stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of investor money to pay for a $37,000-a-month New York apartment where he lived for a time with Ms. Hathaway; private jet travel; expensive restaurants and clothes; medical expenses,...

Facing an $11.6 million budget shortfall, organizers of the Democratic National Convention are cutting events ... The convention's Denver host committee reported it has deposited $29 million of the $40.6 million it promised to the Democratic National Committee by a Monday deadline. The overall convention budget is about $70 million. A planned media walkthrough of the Pepsi Center was abruptly canceled last week, alerting political reporters across the country that something was amiss. People close to the party's convention committee said the event was scrapped in part to embarrass the host committee into stepping up its fundraising efforts. Denver was...

Can't link or post any excerpts. Google "The Comeback Id"....somebody's sandbagging the Toons! From what I've read so far, it's only appropriate this comes out at the same time as "Sex and the City"!

At Ron Burkle's mansion... ON A BALMY evening this week, the crowd at billionaire Ron Burkle's Beverly Hills estate was a mixture of high-level academia and high-level Hollywood, none higher than Robert Redford, actor, director, Sundance guru and the industry's über-environmental activist. Serious gatherings like this at Burkle's begin with a Champagne reception in the foyer, an intimately lavish space where presidents, generals, senators and Los Angeles' moneyed elite mingle and discuss the pressing issues of the day. (Half the town has portraits of themselves with former President Bill Clinton there.) When Redford entered the foyer from the inner sanctum...

The California Public Employees Retirement System Chief Executive Officer may leave by the end of the year amid tensions with the board, marking the third top level executive at the $244 billion retirement fund to depart in 2008... Calpers is in the middle of an internal debate over whether to require infrastructure projects that receive Calpers investments to use union employees... In February, Christianna Wood, senior investment officer, stepped down ...

glaringly missing from the summary was mention of $15 million in fees paid by Burkle's Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund since 2002

I note from Bloomberg News that last year the former president received 2.8 million from a partnership with Ron Burkle. There are actually three Cayman Island accounts that Burkle pays Clinton from. To date, former President Clinton has received 15.5 million from Burkle's efforts. The link for this information can be found: HERE. Wikipedia describes the Burkle and Clinton Cayman Island relationship as follows: "..Recent calls for the release of Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton's tax returns have brought to light the fact that President Clinton is expecting a $20,000,000 payout from Burkle's supermarket...

The earnings represent 20 percent of the approximately $75 million Bill Clinton earned during the same period, according to the documents. That may raise new questions about what services he performed for Los Angeles-based Yucaipa, whose investors include the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al- Maktoum.Tax lawyers said the Yucaipa partnership income for Bill Clinton looks to be a form of salary because it was in round numbers for most years. ``Most people who make that much money work for it,'' said Yale University tax law professor Michael Graetz, a former Treasury Department official in President George H.W....

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - A team from Brazil's Labor Ministry found "degrading" living conditions for 133 sugarcane workers employed by an ethanol company whose investors include former President Clinton and other high- profile financial players. At five sites inspected, workers "complained they were suffering from hunger and cold, and all of the locations were overcrowded and with terrible sanitary conditions," according to a statement issued Friday by Jaqueline Carrijo, who led the inspections last month. The target of the probe, Brazil Renewable Energy Co., known as Brenco, apologized over the weekend and said it is fixing the problems at...

Former President Clinton stands to reap around $20 million -- and will sever a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai -- by ending his high-profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire friend Ron Burkle. Mr. Clinton is negotiating to end his relationship with Mr. Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. as part of a broader effort to protect the presidential campaign of his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, from potential conflicts of interest. Details of Mr. Clinton's involvement in Yucaipa and his efforts to unwind it come from documents and interviews with people familiar with the matter. The former president has had...

SO much for reports that Bill and Hillary Clinton were trying to distance themselves from Ron Burkle. The Beverly Hills billionaire has been named one of the five national finance chairs for Hillary's presidential campaign, sources say. Earlier this month, it was reported Bill Clinton was severing his partnerships in Burkle's Yucaipa Companies and walking away with $20 million. The thinking was that Burkle's wheeling and dealing, with interests in Dubai and in real estate divested by the Vatican, could result in conflicts of interest and hand ammunition to Hillary's political opponents. *snip* The other four Clinton finance chairs are...

Former President Clinton stands to reap around $20 million -- and will sever a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai -- by ending his high-profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire friend Ron Burkle. Mr. Clinton is negotiating to end his relationship with Mr. Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. as part of a broader effort to protect the presidential campaign of his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, from potential conflicts of interest. Details of Mr. Clinton's involvement in Yucaipa and his efforts to unwind it come from documents and interviews with people familiar with the matter. The former president has...

Former President Bill Clinton's decision to reconsider a business relationship with California billionaire Ron Burkle reflects concern those financial dealings may embarrass his wife's presidential candidacy. Securities and Exchange Commission documents and financial- disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton show that Bill Clinton, 61, has a financial stake in three investment entities registered in the Cayman Islands by Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. LLC. In 2004, Hillary Clinton, a New York senator, said she wanted to ``close the loopholes'' for ``people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and...

Babe-chasing billionaire Ron Burkle is a "sexually inept lover" with "zero sensuality"...... Chevyn McClintock was the "unofficial mistress" of the then-married supermarket czar and pal of Bill Clinton. "The only area in life he appeared not to have confidence in was in natural sexual aggression, so I would initiate that transition after a few strong cocktails or large glasses of wine," she writes. "He loved to kiss me but he was not adept....reminded me of getting kissed awkwardly in the fourth grade." McClintock served as Burkle's "hostess for many of the Clinton fund-raisers held at his Greenacre estate in...

American Media, Source Interlink in talks: report Fri Oct 26, 2007 4:45am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - American Media Inc. and Source Interlink Co. (SORC.O: Quote, Profile, Research), two magazine publishers, are discussing a merger, the New York Post reported on Thursday, citing sources close to the matter. Source Interlink's major stockholder, supermarket magnate Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos, and American Media's CEO David Pecker, are close to a deal but questions remain about who would run the combined company, the paper said. A deal would bring together American Media's titles, which include the Star, the National Enquirer and Men's Fitness,...

October 10, 2007 -- Ron Burkle's recent investment in embattled Chinese company Xinhua Finance Media was done at a sharply discounted price, netting the billionaire private-equity investor an instant $50 million paper profit. According to a filing yesterday from with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. paid $3 per share, or $25.7 million, for slightly more than 8.57 million shares.

Burkle-Led Group Gives Lift to Stock Of the Chinese Firm September 27, 2007; Page C2 Xinhua Finance Media Ltd., battling concerns about its governance practices and those of its Chinese parent, said U.S. investment firm Yucaipa Cos. would purchase an unspecified stake in the company from insiders. ..... Xinhua Finance's $45 million acquisition of Glass Lewis this year thrust the Chinese company into the spotlight when two Glass Lewis executives, including the former chief accountant of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, resigned after the takeover. Standard & Poor's recently downgraded Xinhua Finance because of corporate-governance concerns. ..... In recent...

A Laguna Beach investment firm filed a lawsuit against Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu on Friday, claiming he defrauded investors out of at least $23 million and required them to donate to Democratic candidates. According to the lawsuit filed by Briar Wood Investments, Hsu persuaded the company's operator to do business with him by taking him to star-studded Democratic Party events. There, the 56-year-old Hong Kong native was praised by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and others, the lawsuit said. As a condition of doing business with the fundraiser, Hsu directed investors to make contributions...

Campaign finance changes helped create the environment in which a fugitive could be welcomed by Kennedys and Clintons. By Tom Hamburger, Dan Morain and Robin Fields WASHINGTON — When Bill Clinton received an award at a gala dinner honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy last year, the former president expressed his thanks before an audience that included a Nobel Prize winner and a glittering array of show business celebrities and Wall Street titans. Yet the second sentence of his remarks expressed special gratitude to a man almost no one there had heard of: "our friend Norman Hsu." The story of...

Michael Jackson says in a court deposition that the Rev. Jesse Jackson and billionaire Ron Burkle gave him advice to help save him from financial disaster when he was fighting child molestation charges. The Daily News said in Sunday editions it reviewed seven hours of transcripts, finding that the singer believed disloyal advisers took advantage of him financially before a Santa Maria, Calif., jury acquitted him of child molestation in June 2005. Michael Jackson said in a deposition taken last summer in Paris that the entertainment industry was "full of sharks, charlatans and impostors." "Because there's a lot of money...

Bill and Hillary Clinton have dissolved the blind trust that has managed their investments since they entered the White House in 1993, converting all stocks to cash to avoid financial conflicts as she runs for president, according to documents to be filed today with federal ethics officials. The documents reviewed by The Washington Post provide the most complete accounting of how the Clintons accrued $5 million to $25 million in wealth -- nearly all since leaving the White House -- through investments in foreign companies, oil giants and drugmakers without their input or knowledge and without public disclosure. The former...

Just looking through Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure papers, released today and available at this link - http://tray.com/pfd/S07pfd/00001/00001217.pdf Some interesting new developments - Bill Clinton is the sole owner of "WJC International Investments LP, LLC" in New York, NY. It holds such interests as - Yucaipa Global Partnership Fund, LP (investment partnership that invests in securities of corporations that conduct significant operations in foreign countries) (general partner is YGOF GP, Ltd, c/o 1930 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90069) Garrard Worldwide Holdings Ltd (retail jeweler with flagship store in London, England). Garrard is the Crown Jeweller, and appears to...

The union that represents Wall Street Journal employees is working urgently to undercut Rupert Murdoch's bid for the paper by trying to drum up interest from other potential buyers. So far, the union's most hopeful prospect is a Southern California billionaire who is a two-time loser in bidding for newspaper companies over the past two years. Steven Yount, president of the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, said his union has written letters to supermarket magnate and billionaire Ronald W. Burkle, Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren E. Buffett and several other rich people, hoping to entice them to bid on the...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Billionaire investor Ron Burkle is interested in exploring a bid for Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, in conjunction with the union that represents Journal employees, the head of the union said Tuesday. The union, the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, had reached out to Burkle and other potential bidders after Dow Jones' controlling shareholders agreed to meet with Rupert Murdoch to consider his $5 billion bid for the company. The union and many Journal employees, as well as a significant shareholder, Jim Ottaway Jr., remain fiercely opposed to Murdoch's bid, saying...

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch ordered his U.S. editors to kill any negative stories about President Clinton and his wife Hillary, according to claims in a lawsuit. Murdoch, whose News Corp. of America owns the Fox News Channel and the New York Post, is being sued by former Post gossip writer Jared Paul Stern, who contends he was fired illegally, reports the UK's Press Gazette. The Post dismissed Stern last year after he allegedly demanded $100,000 and a $10,000 monthly stipend from California businessman Ron Burkle to keep negative stories about him out of the paper. Charges about how Murdoch...

NEW YORK -- For months, former New York Post scribe Jared Paul Stern was at the center of unseemly accusations that he tried to shake down billionaire Ronald Burkle in exchange for good press in the newspaper's gossip pages. Now Stern has fired back in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Burkle, the Post's archrival Daily News _ even former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Stern accuses of attacking him in an effort to suppress negative stories about themselves. Represented by a longtime critic of the Clintons, Stern alleges the defendants defamed and inflicted emotional distress on...

Sources say the diminutive movie mogul is motivated by jealousy because his old friend Bill Clinton now prefers the company of supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle. Geffen's animosity is also fueled by Burkle's attempt to buy the Los Angeles Times, which Geffen had wanted to purchase for himself. ... said one West Coast source. "Geffen is on a jihad right now." Bill Clinton used to stay at Geffen's mansion (once owned by Jack Warner), but now he stays at Burkle's estate (the former home of silent film star Harold Lloyd) whenever he's in town. Another Democratic source scoffed at Geffen's explanation...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As with most gossip, the full story of the New York Post writer investigated on suspicion he tried to extort a billionaire to keep his name out of the paper may never be known. Nine months after Jared Paul Stern, a contributor to New York's premiere gossip column Page Six in the Post, himself became tabloid fodder, federal prosecutors have dropped the case. Stern and his lawyer said on Wednesday they had been told by the U.S. Attorney's office that prosecutors will no longer pursue the investigation. That clears Stern legally, but he says his career...

Two of the Southland's wealthiest residents made a bid for one of the nation's largest media companies Wednesday in an attempt to restore local ownership of the Los Angeles Times. Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and Ron Burkle, who made his fortune in the supermarket industry, submitted an offer for Chicago-based Tribune Co. In addition to The Times, Tribune owns KTLA Channel 5, three dozen other newspapers and television stations and baseball's Chicago Cubs. The pair would not disclose details of their offer, which was made through companies they control. The bid was "competitive" with at least four offers made for...

My new column, Deal Or No Deal, compares what's happening with Eli Broad, Ron Burkle and David Geffen and the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Co. to NBC's hit game show and asks the question: Broad, Burkle, Geffen... when it comes to the Times, whose briefcase is bigger? (Thursday's New York Times also looks at Geffen's interest in buying the paper. But the story has nothing new in it.) In my view, more and more, the newspaper on Spring Street is beginning to resemble Deal or No Deal. Forget all those ink-stained news males: bring on the female eye candy. Or better...

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and prominent investor Ron Burkle submitted a bid today to buy Tribune Co. of Chicago, which owns the Los Angeles Times, KTLA Channel 5 and the Chicago Cubs. Details about the offer and the price that the duo would be willing to pay remained unclear, but the Los Angeles-based businessmen have said for months that they wanted a local group to take control of The Times ADVERTISEMENT"Affiliates of the Broad Investment Company and [Burkle's] Yucaipa Companies have submitted a competitive bid for acquisition of the entire Tribune company," a source familiar with the offer said. Broad...

Mendacious: Given to or marked by deliberate concealment or misrepresentation of the truth. John Garamendi is running for Lt. Governor and to supplement an apparent mendaciousness, he is praying for induced selective memory loss. Some fifteen years ago, as California insurance commissioner, Garamendi seized the assets of the Executive Life Insurance Company. In doing so, he allowed a questionable junk-bond player and a French government-owned bank to realize a humongous windfall despite a bunch of annuities and policyholders getting the short (and dirty) end of the stick. It is beyond troubling that the man who is ‘supposed’ to be the...

SIR RICHARD BRANSON has joined forces with two of America’s top venture capitalists to slake California’s thirst for environmentally friendly fuels. Branson has injected more than $60m (£32m) into Cilion, a company that will make bioethanol from corn. He is investing alongside Vinod Khosla, the renowned Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and Ron Burkle, a Los Angeles billionaire who counts Bill Clinton among his advisers. The project is the start of a move by Branson’s Virgin empire into environmental businesses, a plan known internally as the Gaia Capitalism Project, after the environmental theory developed by the British scientist James Lovelock. Virgin Fuels,...

Bill and Hillary Clinton, who made influence peddling into an art form, are apparently at it again. The Clintons have developed a profitable and compromising connection with billionaire Ron Burkle. In the past, Burkle has contributed large amounts of cash to the Clintons’ campaigns, their legal defense fund, and to the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Most recently, on April 21, 2006, he hosted a fundraiser for Hillary’s Senate reelection campaign at his Green Acres (Beverly Hills) mansion. But the financial connections do not stop there. Bill Clinton is a senior advisor to Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. Hillary is...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got off to a fast start in his annual September Veto Parade yesterday by saying he would reject state Sen. Sheila Kuehl's nonsensical, poorly drafted bill mandating that California adopt socialized medicine. It is a sad commentary on the Legislature that Kuehl's bill made it this far. Perhaps the governor next can tackle measures that are, respectively, anti-consumer, anti-common sense and pro-corruption. AB 2592, by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would allow car-rental companies to omit the cost of airport fees when advertising rental rates. How does Leno – who sees himself as a classic liberal do-gooder...

The state Republican Party has launched a television ad attacking state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi for mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. The ad targeting Garamendi, a Democrat running against Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, for lieutenant governor, began running Aug. 28 in the Sacramento and Los Angeles media markets. (snip) ANALYSIS: The GOP advertisement attempts to weaken Garamendi, a former gubernatorial candidate and statewide officeholder, by exploiting what is perhaps his greatest political vulnerability. Garamendi has long been dogged by criticism for allegedly mishandling the collapse of the Executive Life Insurance Co. In 1991,...

BILL GATES 'CHARITY' FOUNDATION FINANCES NEWSPAPER PURCHASES The BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION declares its noble mission is to bring "innovations in health and learning to the global community." But the world's largest philanthropic organization also is among the organizations that collectively loaned nearly $400 million to MEDIANEWS GROUP INC. -- for the acquisition of newspapers in California and Minnesota! "I thought this foundation was all about starving kids, not starving newspapers," mocked one Seattle insider. MORE The GATES FOUNDATION loaned an unspecified amount to MEDIANEWS, along with GENERAL ELECTRIC. In April, MEDIANEWS agreed to buy four newspapers, including the...

Three Billionaires Bidding for LA Times Three billionaires, including Hollywood mogul David Geffen, have expressed interest in buying the Los Angeles Times, but have been rebuffed for the time being by its owner, Tribune Co., the paper reported. Geffen, property developer Eli Broad and supermarket investor Ron Burkle each wrote to the board of directors of the Chicago-based firm, which is under pressure from shareholders to boost its flagging share price, the paper said in its Saturday edition. The report, citing unidentified sources, said Tribune's directors considered the three letters at a July 19 board meeting. Tribune Chairman and Chief...

Though more local school bonds are passing, voter support for these measures is in decline. This seeming contradiction can be understood by looking at the impact of Proposition 39 passed by voters in 2000. That year, a small group of multimillionaires and billionaires, most from the Silicon Valley, spent more than $60 million on a campaign to lower the vote threshold for the passage of local school bonds that only property owners are obligated to repay. The two-thirds vote for local bonds was established in the California Constitution of 1879 in recognition of the fact that not everyone who voted...

Dissident group says will continue efforts for sale or breakup of company... Tribune Co. shares gained ground Tuesday, rising as the media company that's been working to revamp operations amid shareholder unrest announced the results of a Dutch tender auction. Analysts said any gains could prove short lived, however. Chicago-based Tribune Co said that about 45 million, or 15%, of its common shares were tendered and that it expects to buy the shares at a price of $32.50 each. The number of shares tendered came in 8 million short of the maximum that the company had initially authorized in the...

Beer distributor Yusef Jackson has finally added a coveted title: publisher... Son of Rainbow/PUSH Coalition leader Rev. Jesse Jackson is attempting to resuscitate Radar, a saucy New York culture magazine that folded last year. He also said he’s hungry for other media properties, including the Chicago Sun-Times, for which he was an unsuccessful suitor in 2004, and possibly properties Tribune Co. sells off as it pares $500 million in assets amid a corporate restructuring. Mr. Jackson declined to say who his co-investors are in Radar. In 2004 he sought to buy the Sun-Times with California billionaire Ron Burkle, but he...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Tribune Co.'s second-largest shareholder has raised the stakes in its dispute over the company's strategic direction, calling for "decisive action" by the newspaper publisher and broadcaster, including a possible sale. The Chandler Trusts, which own more than 12% of Tribune's < outstanding shares, had objected last week to Tribune's plan to buy back up to 25% of its stock, which was part of an attempt to lift a stock price that has lost nearly half its value in the last two years. Most of those shares are to be purchased in Dutch-auction tender offer. In a regulatory...

Local investors express interest in bidding for the Tribune Co. paper amid a boardroom rift. Could the Los Angeles Times once again be up for sale? That question is on the minds of several of the city's richest businessmen, who reaffirmed this week their interest in bidding for the country's fourth-largest daily newspaper. Billionaire investor Ron Burkle, former Olympics organizer and Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and philanthropist Eli Broad have indicated in recent interviews or in comments to others that they would like to buy The Times or see it in local hands. "The L.A. Times is a...