The years since, however, have tested Smith’s long run of predicting extraordinary success and then realizing it. Vice had become the tenth-highest-valued private company in America, according to CB Insights, at a valuation of $5.7 billion, and as recently as 2016, Smith had told The Wall Street Journalthat by the end of the decade, Vice could be worth $50 billion.
VICE MEDIA OWNER FREE
The pitch had worked to the point that Vice had grown from a free magazine to a company with 3,000 employees spread across a cable network, more than a dozen websites, two shows on HBO, an ad agency, a film studio, a record label, and a bar in London. Smith’s beard and Canadian drawl had become an avatar of the company, both on-camera, in Vice documentaries about drug gangs and warlords, and in front of corporate audiences, where he persistently declared the inevitability of his company’s global domination and landed deals with an aggressive sales pitch: Pay Vice to join its youth revolution or get left behind. Missing from the scene was Shane Smith, Vice’s co-founder, who shocked his employees and the media world in March by announcing that he was stepping aside as the company’s longtime CEO.
They were chatting amiably about whatever it is two people brought in to change a troubled company’s fortunes talk about.
VICE MEDIA OWNER TV
Visitors were still required to sign in on a tablet that featured an image of a woman’s red lips opened wide to reveal a tab of acid, but the TV screens in the lobby promoted a forthcoming seminar on “How to Be an Ally.” On the company’s sprawling roof-deck overlooking the East River, Nancy Dubuc, the former head of A&E who had started as Vice’s CEO the day before, sat in a lounge chair with Dominique Delport, a French advertising executive recently hired as the company’s chief revenue officer.
It was sunny in Williamsburg on the last Wednesday in May, which also happened to be the second day of a new era at Vice Media. We look forward to completing the sale process in the next two to three months and charting a healthy and successful next chapter at VICE," they added.Photo: Christopher Lane/Contour by Getty Images "We will have new ownership, a simplified capital structure and the ability to operate without the legacy liabilities that have been burdening our business. "This accelerated court-supervised sale process will strengthen the Company and position VICE for long-term growth, thereby safeguarding the kind of authentic journalism and content creation that makes VICE such a trusted brand for young people and such a valued partner to brands, agencies and platforms," Bruce Dixon and Hozefa Lokhandwala, Vice Media's co-CEOs, said in a statement. The bankruptcy announcement will facilitate the sale of Vice Media to a group of its top lenders led by Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management - which has agreed to an acquisition of the company that values it at about $225 million, the statement said. The group of sites, which includes food outlet Munchies and fashion news brand Refinery29, will continue publishing as the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process unfolds and the site takes on new ownership, Vice Media said in a statement. Vice Media, the youth-oriented publisher of prominent online outlets such as Vice and Motherboard, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, underscoring the fraught economic environment for digital media companies as economic growth slows and the advertising market softens.
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