Potential Sun-Times bidder drops out, but others could challenge Tronc

A suburban hedge fund manager who’d been considering submitting a bid to buy the Chicago Sun-Times before a 5 p.m. deadline on Monday now appears to be out of the running.

Thane Ritchie, head of the suburban hedge fund Ritchie Capital, had been weighing a bid for the Sun-Times and weekly Chicago Reader, but a business associate of Ritchie’s said Monday afternoon that Ritchie has removed himself to make way for another bid being headed up by businessman Edwin Eisendrath, a former 43rd Ward alderman.

Stephen Denari, a mergers-and-acquisitions consultant who works with Ritchie, said that Ritchie stepped aside because, like Eisendrath, Ritchie planned to include investments from labor unions as part of his bid.

The strategy too closely overlapped with Eisendrath’s, Denari said.

Read more: http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/billionaire-neil-bluhms-family-a-possible-sun-times-bidder-report/