Long-time Lee Enterprises, Inc. board member and former chairman Mary Junck, whose tenure was defined by taking on enormous corporate debt to buy the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2005, has retired.
Lee – the Davenport-based company that owns the QC Times, Daily Dispatch/Argus and some 70 other news outlets – did not issue a news release about her retirement. The change to the board membership, effective July 31, was contained in a required filing July 10 with the Security and Exchange Commission.
Junck was CEO when Lee purchased the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for $1.46 billion and took on the huge debt that the company is still struggling to repay today.
Shortly after the acquisition, the digital transformation of the news and advertising business arrived with Google and other online firms decimating newspaper advertising revenues and print subscriptions.
As part of a deal to refinance its debt in 2020, Lee agreed to pay $140 million for 31 media properties owned by Warren Buffett's BH Media Group in exchange for a $576-million loan at a fixed interest rate of 9 percent.
In January of 2025, Florida billionaire David Hoffmann invested $50 million in Lee giving him control of the board and obtaining a decrease in the interest rate on the loan held by BH Finance, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, over a 5-year period.
The company now has a debt of $455 million which carries an annual interest rate of 5 percent. The decrease in the interest rate is expected to lower Lee's debt payments by a total of $90 million over the 5-year agreement with BH Finance.
Also retiring from the Lee board in July was Herbert W. Maloney III, who has served on the board for nearly as long as Ms. Junck.
