Mired in an ongoing legal battle with the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, Gawker Media has hired a veteran investment banker to help it weigh its strategic options, including a potential sale.
The media company confirmed Thursday that it has hired Mark Patricof, a senior banker at the firm Houlihan Lokey, to provide financial advice.
Patricof was hired in recent weeks. In a statement, Gawker said that it has worked with investment bankers for some time, and that Patricof is only the latest.
Gawker had weighed potential offers earlier this year that were as high as about $350 million, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Gawker said word of Patricof’s hiring “seems to have stirred up some excitement, when the fact is that nothing is new.”
The strategic review is in its early stages, and Gawker’s founder and majority owner, Nick Denton, has not made any decisions on how to proceed, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Houlihan Lokey is known for its expertise both in mergers and in corporate restructuring.
Still, the news comes a day after Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and venture capitalist, acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that he had bankrolled lawsuits against Gawker, including one by Terry Gene Bollea, the professional wrestler known as Hulk Hogan. A Florida jury has awarded $140 million to Bollea in his case. The media company is appealing the verdict.
Other lawsuits, led by the same lawyer representing Bollea, are still pending.
Last year, Denton revealed that Gawker Media generated about $45 million in advertising revenue in 2014 and profit of about $7 million. But the prospect of further litigation draining the company’s coffers has prompted the media outlet to prepare contingency planning around what the company described as Thiel’s “revenge campaign.”
In his interview with The Times, Thiel — who was outed as being gay by Gawker Media nearly a decade ago — said that he does not view his underwriting of the lawsuits as a business venture. “I would underscore that I don’t expect to make any money from this,” he said.
Earlier this year, Gawker agreed to sell a minority stake to the tech venture capital firm Columbus Nova Technology Partners.
As part of the deal, Jason Epstein, a managing partner at Columbus Nova, would join Gawker’s board. The companies did not disclose the size of the stake.
The ongoing legal warfare has given pause to some other potential investors. Several months ago, Gawker had been in discussions with Univision about a potential sale, though those discussions eventually faltered, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.