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Vice Media's decline continued Monday morning as the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in preparation for its sale to a consortium of lenders that have stepped in to acquire the troubled company.
Despite having drawn major funding from Fox and Disney, the media outlet has faced financial troubles for years as it transitioned from a young adult magazine into a large-scale news outlet that not only had its own film studio but also deals with HBO at one point.
Vice has agreed to the terms of an asset purchase agreement with a group of its lenders including Soros Fund Management, Monroe Capital, and Fortress Investment Group.
The company said that the consortium had submitted an approximately $225 million credit bid "for substantially all of the Company's assets, in addition to the assumption of significant liabilities upon closing."
"To facilitate the sale, Vice has filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York," the outlet said in a statement.
According to the petition filed with the court, New-York based Vice said that its estimated assets were between $500 million and $1 billion. The company also estimated that it had more than 5,000 creditors, according to Breitbart.
The figures provided in the petition show the outlet's sharp decline in recent years. In 2017, Vice was valued at $5.7 billion, which was more than the market capitalization of the New York Times.
In recent years, ad revenue for both Vice Media and BuzzFeed News have slowly dried up leaving both companies struggling to draw new investors and forcing them to rely on debt to stay afloat. BuzzFeed News also recently shut down.
Meanwhile, other media conglomerates such as Disney, NPR, and Vox Media have begun downsizing as the media landscape continues to shift.
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