Standard General sends letter Elizabeth Warren on Tegna deal, requests meeting

Update 5:55pm on Jan. 14: Adds Standard General comment.

Standard General sent a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) seeking to meet regarding her comments on the Tegna (NYSE:TGNA) deal.

The letter comes after Warren sent a letter Wednesday to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to block Standard General’s acquisition of Tegna. News of the letter sent Tegna shares down 3.3% on Thursday and they ticked lower 0.7% on Friday.

“We appreciate Sen. Warren’s concerns and are confident that through our binding commitments and the fundamentals of this transaction we have more than addressed them,” Standard General said in a statement emailed to Seeking Alpha. “This transaction will protect local newsroom jobs across the country, enhance investment in local television broadcasting and newsgathering, and preserve competition in the marketplace, while creating the nation’s largest minority-owned, woman-led broadcast company.”

The Warren push comes after Standard General last month offered some remedies to the regulators including waiving some certain contractual rights in an effort to appease regulators at the FCC and the Dept. of Justice.

Warren in the letter argued that the behavioral remedies “are historically ineffective and should provide no comfort that these Wall Street firms will not engage in anticompetitive practices after the deal is completed.”

News of the Standard General letter to Warren was earlier reported in a Dealreporter tweet.

Dealreporter last month that Standard General’s offer was likely to resolve the FCC’s and the Dept. of Justice’s concerns.