HSBC to pay record $1.9B fine

British-owned bank HSBC is paying $1.9B to settle a US money-laundering probe. The bank was investigated for involvement in the transfer of funds from Mexican drug cartels and sanctioned nations like Iran. (Dec. 11)

HSBC has agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine to settle a multi-year probe by U.S. prosecutors, who accused Europe's biggest bank of failing to enforce rules designed to prevent the laundering of criminal cash.

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday charged the bank with failing to maintain an effective program against money laundering and conduct due diligence on certain accounts.

In documents filed in federal court in Brooklyn, it also charged the bank with violating sanctions laws by doing business with Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba.

HSBC Holdings Plc admitted to a breakdown of controls and apologised for its conduct.

"We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organisation from the one that made those mistakes," said Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver.

"Over the last two years, under new senior leadership, we have been taking concrete steps to put right what went wrong and to participate actively with government authorities in bringing to light and addressing these matters."

The bank agreed to forfeit $1.256 billion and retain a compliance monitor to resolve the charges through a deferred-prosecution agreement.

The settlement offers new information about failures at HSBC to police transactions linked to Mexico, details of which were reported this summer in a sweeping U.S. Senate probe.

The Senate panel alleged that HSBC failed to maintain controls designed to prevent money laundering by drug cartels, terrorists and tax cheats, when acting as a financier to clients routing funds from places including Mexico, Iran and Syria.

The bank was unable to properly monitor $15 billion in bulk cash transactions between mid-2006 and mid-2009, and had inadequate staffing and high turnover in its compliance units, the Senate panel's July report said.

HSBC on Tuesday said it expected to also reach a settlement with British watchdog the Financial Services Authority. The FSA declined to comment.

U.S. and European banks have now agreed to settlements with U.S. regulators totalling some $5 billion in recent years on charges they violated U.S. sanctions and failed to police potentially illicit transactions.

No bank or bank executives, however, have been indicted, as prosecutors have instead used deferred prosecutions - under which criminal charges against a firm are set aside if it agrees to conditions such as paying fines and changing behaviour.

HSBC's settlement also includes agreements or consent orders with the Manhattan district attorney, the Federal Reserve and three U.S. Treasury Department units: the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

HSBC said it would pay $1.921 billion, continue to cooperate fully with regulatory and law enforcement authorities, and take further action to strengthen its compliance policies and procedures. U.S. prosecutors have agreed to defer or forego prosecution.

The settlement is the third time in a decade that HSBC has been penalized for lax controls and ordered by U.S. authorities to better monitor suspicious transactions. Directives by regulators to improve oversight came in 2003 and again in 2010.

Last month, HSBC told investors it had set aside $1.5 billion to cover fines or penalties stemming from the inquiry and warned that costs could be significantly higher.

Analyst Jim Antos of Mizuho Securities said the settlement costs were "trivial" in terms of the company's book value.

"But in terms of real cash terms, that's a huge fine to pay," said Antos, who rates HSBC a "buy".

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IHSA rules Mooseheart basketball players eligible to play

Tribune follows the Mooseheart High School basketball team to the junior varsity game held at Hinckley-Big Rock High School in Hinckley on Dec. 5, 2012. Mooseheart lost 58-51. (Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune)

The Illinois High School Association has determined that three Sudanese athletes for Mooseheart High School are eligible to play, but the IHSA also sanctioned the school.

The state athletic governing body's executive director on Nov. 29 deemed Mangisto Deng, Akim Nyang and Makur Puou — all 6 feet, 7 inches and taller — ineligible to play for Mooseheart High School. The IHSA board reviewed the case and found them eligible today, the board president said this evening.

After nearly four hours of deliberation, the IHSA board voted unanimously to declare the students eligible.

The decision reversed IHSA Executive Director Gary Hickman's ruling last month that barred the boys from playing.

But the board also sanctioned Mooseheart by placing it on probation and barring it from participating in the 2013 state basketball tournament until school officials institute training and compliance measures to ensure that the program does not run afoul of recruiting rules in the future, and severs contact with a placement organization at the center of the controversy, African Hoop Opportunities Providing an Education, or AHOPE.

Board President Dan Klett was blunt about the IHSA's view of AHOPE.

When asked what he would say to any other school who might use AHOPE to find basketball players, Klett said, "Don't. We don't believe they are a quality organization."

Klett said AHOPE used the students as pawns, and said Mooseheart didn't do enough to make sure they were complying with IHSA rules.

Mooseheart engaged in recruiting the three basketball players and a fourth Sudanese teen who is a talented cross-country runner for athletic purposes, Hickman had said. IHSA bylaws prohibit athletic recruitment.

Mooseheart, a 99-year-old residential and educational institution for children from unstable environments, disputed Hickman's decision and won a temporary reprieve Tuesday in Kane County Court.

Judge David Akemann granted Mooseheart's request to allow the boys to play until the IHSA board of directors reviewed the case.

Attorneys for the "child city" contended it told the organization placing the boys that Mooseheart would accept Sudanese children regardless of their athletic prowess.

The attorneys also noted that Mooseheart had no contact with the boys until they arrived on its bucolic, 1,000-acre campus in Batavia in May 2011, then waited a full year — at the IHSA's direction — before allowing the teens to compete.

But IHSA attorney David J. Bressler noted that the placement organization specifies that it works with athletes exclusively and that Mooseheart basketball coach Ron Ahrens deliberately called the organization, African Hoop Opportunities Providing an Education, seeking basketball players.

The IHSA board considered Mooseheart's case in a meeting that started about 1 p.m Monday at the organization's Bloomington office.

tgregory@tribune.com

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‘Skyfall’ launches back to top spot with $10.8M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The James Bond blockbuster “Skyfall” has risen back to the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office, taking in $ 10.8 million.

That brought its domestic total to $ 261.4 million and its worldwide haul to a franchise record of $ 918 million.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. “Skyfall,” Sony, $ 10,780,201, 3,401 locations, $ 3,170 average, $ 261,400,281, five weeks.

2. “Rise of the Guardians,” Paramount, $ 10,400,618, 3,639 locations, $ 2,858 average, $ 61,774,192, three weeks.

3. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” Summit, $ 9,156,265, 3,646 locations, $ 2,511 average, $ 268,691,029, four weeks.

4. “Lincoln,” $ 8,916,813, 2,014 locations, $ 4,427 average, $ 97,137,447, five weeks.

5. “Life of Pi,” Fox, $ 8,330,764, 2,946 locations, $ 2,828 average, $ 60,948,293, three weeks.

6. “Playing For Keeps,” FilmDistrict, $ 5,750,288, 2,837 locations, $ 2,027 average, $ 5,750,288, one week.

7. “Wreck-It Ralph,” Disney, $ 4,859,368, 2,746 locations, $ 1,770 average, $ 164,402,934, six weeks.

8. “Red Dawn,” FilmDistrict, $ 4,236,105, 2,754 locations, $ 1,538 average, $ 37,240,920, three weeks.

9. “Flight,” Paramount, $ 3,130,305, 2,431 locations, $ 1,288 average, $ 86,202,541, six weeks.

10. “Killing Them Softly,” Weinstein Co., $ 2,806,901, 2,424 locations, $ 1,158 average, $ 11,830,638, two weeks.

11. “Silver Linings Playbook,” Weinstein Co., $ 2,171,665, 371 locations, $ 5,854 average, $ 13,964,405, four weeks.

12. “Anna Karenina,” Focus, $ 1,544,859, 422 locations, $ 3,661 average, $ 6,603,042, four weeks.

13. “The Collection,” LD Entertainment, $ 1,487,655, 1,403 locations, $ 1,060 average, $ 5,455,328, two weeks.

14. “Argo,” Warner Bros., $ 1,482,346, 944 locations, $ 1,570 average, $ 103,160,015, nine weeks.

15. “End of Watch,” Open Road Films, $ 751,623, 1,259 locations, $ 597 average, $ 39,989,766, 12 weeks.

16. “Hitchcock,” Fox Searchlight, $ 712,544, 181 locations, $ 3,937 average, $ 1,661,670, three weeks.

17. “Talaash,” Reliance Big Pictures, $ 449,195, 161 locations, $ 2,790 average, $ 2,397,909, two weeks.

18. “Taken 2,” Fox, $ 387,227, 430 locations, $ 901 average, $ 137,700,304, 10 weeks.

19. “Pitch Perfect,” Universal, $ 305,765, 387 locations, $ 790 average, $ 63,517,408, 11 weeks.

20. “The Sessions,” Fox, $ 218,973, 197 locations, $ 1,112 average, $ 4,948,342, eight weeks.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Vital Signs: Smoking Tied to Less Dense Bones for Girls

Smoking in teenage girls is associated with slower development of bone mineral density, a new study reports.

The scientists studied 262 healthy girls ages 11 to 19, using questionnaires and interviews to assess their smoking habits. The researchers also measured the girls’ bone density at the hip and lumbar spine three times at one-year intervals.

Smokers entered adolescence with the same lumbar and hip bone density as nonsmokers, but by age 19, they were about a year behind on average. After adjusting for other factors that affect bone health — height, weight, hormonal contraceptive use and more — the researchers found that even relatively low or irregular rates of smoking were independently associated with lower bone density.

The study, published last week in The Journal of Adolescent Health, used a sample that fell below national averages for calcium intake and physical activity, so the results may not be generalizable to wider populations.

The lead author, Lorah D. Dorn, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, pointed out that this is only one study and that more research is needed. Still, she said, “It tells me that for care providers — clinicians and parents — this needs to be something they’re vigilant about.”

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McDonald's sales rebound in November

McDonald’s took Wall Street by surprise Monday morning, with a November same store sales report that beat expectations and showed particular strength in the U.S. business.

The news follows a weak performance in October that had some investors speculating about the future of the world’s largest restaurant company.

The Oak Brook-based burger giant reported U.S. same store sales up 2.5 percent on the strength of its breakfast business, value offerings, beverages and limited-time offers like the cheddar bacon onion sandwich. In Europe, same store sales grew 1.4 percent, and 0.6 percent in the chain’s Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa division.

Overall, same store sales increased 2.4 percent, beating expectations of a roughly flat performance. Company stock rose nearly 1 percent in early morning trading, to $89.35.

"We are strengthening our focus on the global priorities that are most impactful to our customers -- optimizing our menu, modernizing the customer experience and broadening accessibility to our brand to move our business forward," McDonald's CEO Don Thompson said in a statement.

While the sales report is likely to be a boon for the burger giant, investors don’t expect company performance to return to normal levels until early 2013. Winter is typically the slow period for fast food chains, with summer typically being the busiest season.

Baird analyst David Tarantino raised his fourth quarter earnings estimate by a penny Monday morning following the sales announcement. He wrote that while company performance "could remain soft" through the first quarter of 2013, "the November sales report supports our thesis that McDonald's can achieve better performance in 2013 as a whole, with results aided by planned initiatives (including increased emphasis on value plus premium offerings across markets), fewer cost pressures, and less negative currency translation."

The chain has taken a tough stance on slipping U.S. sales. The company’s October sales, which slipped 2.2 percent, marked the first decline in more than nine years. Days later, McDonald’s said U.S. president Jan Fields had resigned and would be replaced by Jeff Stratton.

eyork@tribune.com | Twitter: @emilyyork

MCD data by YCharts

MCD data by YCharts

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Singer Jenni Rivera feared dead in plane crash

The wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying Mexican-American music superstar Jenni Rivera was found in northern Mexico on Sunday and there are no apparent survivors, authorities said.

Transportation and Communications Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said "everything points toward" it being the U.S.-registered Learjet 25 carrying Rivera and six other people to Toluca, outside Mexico City, from Monterrey. The plane had gone missing shortly after takeoff early Sunday.

"There is nothing recognizable, neither material nor human" in the wreckage found in the state of Nuevo Leon, Ruiz Esparza told the Televisa network. The impact was so powerful that the remains of the plane "are scattered over an area of 250 to 300 meters. It is almost unrecognizable."

Local media in Mexico sent condolences to family of Rivera, who has sold more than 15 million records, but authorities still had not confirmed that Rivera was aboard the plane and said there will be an investigation to identify the remains found.

"My friend! Why? There is no consolation. God help me!" said Mexican songstress Paulina Rubio on her official Twitter account. Singer star Lucero wrote on her Twitter account: "My deepest sympathies for her family and friends. Luz."

Jorge Domene, spokesman for Nuevo Leon's government, said the plane left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m. after Rivera gave a concert there and aviation authorities lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes later. It had been scheduled to arrive in Toluca about an hour later.

Also aboard the plane were her publicist, Arturo Rivera, her lawyer, makeup artist and the flight crew.

The 43-year-old Rivera who was born and raised in Long Beach, California, is one of the biggest stars of the Mexican regional style known as grupero music, which is influenced by the norteno, cumbia and ranchero styles.

The so-called "La Diva de la Banda" was beloved by fans on both sides of the border for songs such as "De Contrabando" and "La Gran Senora."

She recently won two Billboard Mexican Music Awards: Female Artist of the Year and Banda Album of the Year for "Joyas prestadas: Banda." She has also been nominated various times for Latin Grammys.

The singer, businesswoman and actress appeared in the indie film Filly Brown, which appeared at the Sundance Film Festival, as the incarcerated mother of Filly Brown. She has her own reality shows including "I Love Jenni" and "Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis and Raq-C" and her daughter's "Chiquis 'n Control."

Rivera had given a concert before thousands of fans in Monterrey on Saturday night. After the concert she gave a press conference during which she spoke of her emotional state following her recent divorce from former Major League Baseball pitcher Esteban Loaiza, who played for teams including the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.

"I can't get caught up in the negative because that destroys you. Perhaps trying to move away from my problems and focus on the positive is the best I can do. I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other woman," she said Saturday night. "The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."

The mother of five children and grandmother of two had announced in October that she was divorcing Loaiza after two years of marriage. It was her third marriage.

She was proud to present herself as a Latina woman struggling to give a good life to her children.

"I am the same as the public, as my fans," she told The Associated Press in an interview last March.

Rivera is the sister of Mexican singer Lupillo Rivera. Patricia Chavez of Lupillo Rivera's office in the United States told The AP that "for now we don't have any information that would be useful."

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Amazon’s Android Appstore explodes, downloads increase 500% over last year

Amazon’s (AMZN) Appstore is on fire. While the marketplace may not boost as many apps as Google’s (GOOG) Play Store, it has seen substantial growth in the past year. In fact, the company announced on Thursday that its Appstore has seen downloads increase more than 500% since last year. Amazon also revealed that the number of developers utilizing in-app purchasing doubled in the third quarter and that 23 of the top 25 grossing apps now incorporate the technology.

“Amazon offers the best end-to-end solution for app and game developers,” said Aaron Rubenson, Director of Amazon Appstore for Android. “Developers can use Amazon Web Services’ building blocks as the infrastructure for their games. To enhance customer engagement, they can add features like GameCircle’s Leaderboards, Achievements, Friends, and Whispersync. Amazon’s In-App Purchasing allows developers to generate additional income. Finally, since discovery can be a major challenge for app developers, we’re providing more and more ways to help developers reach customers on Amazon, Kindle Fire devices, and in our Appstore. We’re working hard to make lives easier for developers, and to give them more ways to grow their business.”

The success of Amazon’s Appstore is directly related to the success of its Kindle Fire line of tablets. Unlike most Android devices, the Kindle Fire does not include access to Google Play and instead must rely solely on Amazon’s offering for content and applications.

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Bond movie “Skyfall” beats “Lincoln” at box office

(Reuters) – James Bond showed remarkable staying power as the latest installment of the spy series, “Skyfall,” captured the box office title and collected $ 11 million in its fifth week in U.S. and Canadian movie theaters, outgunning Steven Spielberg‘s “Lincoln” and “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” the final installment of the blockbuster vampire series.

“Skyfall,” the 23rd film in the series featuring Agent 007, also led movies at the box office when it first opened on November 2 and is already the best-selling movie in the 49-year old series. This weekend, it became the highest grossing movie in Sony Pictures‘ history with $ 918 million in ticket sales worldwide. The film distributed by Sony‘s Hollywood studio, has collected nearly $ 262 million in domestic sales, according to the movie tracking site Hollywood.com.

The animated “Rise of the Guardians” from Dreamworks Animation was second with $ 10.5 million in ticket sales. The movie, which was made for $ 145 million, opened with a disappointing $ 23.8 million when it first hit movie theaters on November 21. Since then, it has been steadily working its way toward becoming a solid family hit this season.

“Rise of the Guardians, which features Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and other childhood favorites who join together to save the world, was one of two family movies in a season traditionally heavy in family films. The other, Disney’s “Wreck-it Ralph,” collected $ 4.9 million for seventh place.

“Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” the box office leader for the past three weeks, tallied $ 9.2 million in ticket sales. The five-movie series, released by Lions Gate Entertainment, is based on Stephenie Meyer‘s best-selling book about young vampire love and has collected more than $ 1.3 billion in overall domestic ticket sales.

“Lincoln,” which chronicles the 16th president’s successful fight to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery, had total ticket sales of $ 9.1 million, according to studio estimates provided by the box office division of Hollywood.com.

“Life of Pi,” director Ang Lee’s movie about a boy who escapes a shipwreck but then shares his lifeboat with a tiger, sold $ 8.3 million in tickets to finish in fifth place. The movie, released by the Fox studio, is based on a best-selling 2001 novel by Yann Martel.

Hollywood studios shied away from scheduling major movies this weekend, steering clear of the expected blockbuster “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which Warner Brothers will release on December 14. The movie, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy novel about wizards and dwarves, features many of the same actors from the blockbuster “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

The only new major release, the romantic comedy “Playing for Keeps” starring Gerard Butler and Jessica Biel, opened with a lackluster $ 6 million, which was on target with forecasts by industry experts.

(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Andrea Burzynski; Editing by Bill Trott and Jackie Frank)

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A Breakthrough Against Leukemia Using Altered T-Cells

PHILIPSBURG, Pa. — Emma Whitehead has been bounding around the house lately, practicing somersaults and rugby-style tumbles that make her parents wince.

It is hard to believe, but last spring Emma, then 6, was near death from leukemia. She had relapsed twice after chemotherapy, and doctors had run out of options.

Desperate to save her, her parents sought an experimental treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one that had never before been tried in a child, or in anyone with the type of leukemia Emma had. The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the AIDS virus to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells.

The treatment very nearly killed her. But she emerged from it cancer-free, and seven months later is still in complete remission. She is the first child and one of the first humans ever in whom new techniques have achieved a long-sought goal — giving a patient’s own immune system the lasting ability to fight cancer.

Emma had been ill with acute lymphoblastic leukemia since 2010, when she was 5, her parents, Kari and Tom, said. She is their only child.

She is among just a dozen patients with advanced leukemia to have received the experimental treatment, which was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Similar approaches are also being tried at other centers, including the National Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Our goal is to have a cure, but we can’t say that word,” said Dr. Carl June, who leads the research team at the University of Pennsylvania. He hopes the new treatment will eventually replace bone-marrow transplantation, an even more arduous, risky and expensive procedure that is now the last hope when other treatments fail in leukemia and related diseases.

Three adults with chronic leukemia treated at the University of Pennsylvania have also had complete remissions, with no signs of disease; two of them have been well for more than two years, said Dr. David Porter. Four adults improved but did not have full remissions, and one was treated too recently to evaluate. A child improved and then relapsed. In two adults, the treatment did not work at all. The Pennsylvania researchers are presenting their results on Sunday and Monday in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Despite the mixed results, cancer experts not involved with the research say it has tremendous promise, because even in this early phase of testing it has worked in seemingly hopeless cases.

“I think this is a major breakthrough,” said Dr. Ivan Borrello, a cancer expert and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. John Wagner, director of pediatric blood and marrow transplantation at the University of Minnesota, called the Pennsylvania results “phenomenal,” and said they were “what we’ve all been working and hoping for but not seeing to this extent.”

A major drug company, Novartis, is betting on the Penn team, and has committed $20 million to building a research center on the Penn campus to bring the treatment to market.

Hervé Hoppenot, president of Novartis Oncology, called the research “fantastic” and said it had the potential — if the early results hold up — to revolutionize the treatment of leukemia and related blood cancers. Researchers say the same approach, reprogramming the patient’s immune system, may also be used eventually against tumors like breast and prostate cancer.

To perform the treatment, doctors remove millions of the patient’s T-cells — a type of white blood cell — and insert new genes that enable the T-cells to kill cancer cells. The new genes program the T-cells to attack B-cells, a normal part of the immune system that turns malignant in leukemia.

The altered T-cells — called chimeric antigen receptor cells — are then dripped back into the patient’s veins, and if all goes well they multiply like crazy and start destroying the cancer.

The T-cells home in on a protein called CD-19 that is found on the surface of most B-cells, whether they are healthy or malignant.

A sign that the treatment is working is that the patient becomes terribly ill, with raging fevers and chills — a reaction that oncologists call “shake and bake,” Dr. June said. Its medical name is cytokine-release syndrome, or cytokine storm, referring to the natural chemicals that pour out of cells in the immune system as they are being activated, causing fevers and other symptoms. The storm can also flood the lungs and cause perilous drops in blood pressure — effects that nearly killed Emma.

Steroids sometimes ease the reaction, but did not help Emma. Her temperature hit 105. She wound up on a ventilator, unconscious and swollen almost beyond recognition, surrounded by friends and family who had come to say goodbye.

But at the eleventh hour, a battery of blood tests gave the researchers a clue as to what might help save Emma: Her level of one of the cytokines, interleukin-6 or IL-6, had shot up a thousandfold. Doctors had never seen such a spike before and thought it might be what was making her so sick. Dr. June knew that a drug could lower IL-6 — his daughter takes it, for rheumatoid arthritis. It had never been used for a crisis like Emma’s, but there was little to lose. Her oncologist, Dr. Stephan A. Grupp, ordered the drug. The response, he said, was “amazing.”

Within hours, Emma began to stabilize. She woke up a week later, on May 2, the day she turned 7; the intensive-care staff sang “Happy Birthday.”

Since then, the research team has used the same drug, tocilizumab, in several other patients.

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WGN America may be channel of change for Tribune Co.

On Sunday night, WGN-Ch. 9 will air "Bozo's Circus: The Lost Tape," a 1971 episode that an alert archivist discovered after four decades of gathering dust.

At the same time, WGN America, the station's national cable counterpart, will beam reruns of the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" to its 75 million subscribers across the country.

Part of Tribune Co.'s future may rest with programming decisions like that.

Poised to emerge from its lengthy bankruptcy, the Chicago-based media company is expected to enter the new year with its holdings intact, a clean balance sheet and a plan to sell everything eventually.

The expected decision to name television executive Peter Liguori as Tribune Co.'s chief executive — he was the architect of basic cable powerhouse FX's first-run success — points to unlocking the value of the 34-year-old superstation as integral to a profitable exit strategy for the new owners of Tribune Co.

A source close to the situation told the Tribune that Liguori sees WGN America as an undervalued cable network with tremendous potential, if it gets the programming investment required. Developing the channel will "absolutely be a focus" after Liguori joins the company, which could happen within weeks.

"I'm sure that's the plan," said Derek Baine, a senior media analyst with SNL Kagan. "It all comes down to how much money you're investing in programming to get the viewers."

The new owners, senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and JPMorgan Chase, have made it clear that monetizing Tribune Co.'s publishing, broadcasting and other holdings after a four-year slog through Chapter 11 is a matter of time. The process will likely challenge the maxim that the whole of Tribune Co. — estimated to be worth $4.5 billion post-emergence — is more than the sum of its parts. That's especially true when one of those parts is national cable channel WGN America, a low-rated repository of Cubs games and reruns, whose upside potential may dwarf all of the other assets combined.

Broadcasting assets, including 23 television stations, WGN-AM 720, CLTV and WGN America, represent the core profit center and account for $2.85 billion of Tribune Co.'s value, according to financial adviser Lazard. Tribune's eight daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, are worth $623 million, and other strategic assets, such as stakes in CareerBuilder and Food Network, are valued at $2.26 billion, according to a 2012 report by Lazard.

The value of the TV stations, including KTLA-TV in Los Angeles and WPIX-TV in New York, should benefit from an improving appetite for acquisitions, according to analysts. But WGN America, with the help of a few hit shows and some rebranding, could be the sleeping giant on the books. Turner Broadcasting's TBS, for example, has five times the audience and seven times the cash flow of WGN America and carries a distinct brand. It is worth more than twice that of the entire Tribune Co.

Liguori's success at FX Networks could well be the blueprint. After joining what was a small basic cable channel in 1998, Liguori was elevated to CEO in 2001 and transformed the network by offering original programming such as "The Shield," "Nip/Tuck" and "Rescue Me," building ratings and revenues in the process.

"You just need a couple of hit shows and then you can start building a schedule around them," Baine said. "A lot of these cable networks, you take one hit show and get people hooked on it and then you can stick another one in the time slot right behind it and start building on that."

Last year, FX had a cash flow of nearly $553 million on net revenue of more than $1 billion, making the network worth nearly $8 billion, Baine said.

WGN America is often compared with TBS to illustrate the upside, and the divergent paths the two original superstations have taken as the cable network model — a dual revenue stream of affiliate fees and advertising dollars — has evolved over the last two decades.

Both WGN and WTBS were uploaded to satellite in the late '70s, filling the programming void for distant cable systems with local baseball and "Andy Griffith" reruns. TBS became a division of Time Warner in 1996 and transformed into a full-fledged cable network, shelving old reruns for off-network sitcoms, benching the Atlanta Braves for national MLB coverage and rolling out first-run programming featuring everything from Tyler Perry to Conan O'Brien. The network dropped "superstation" and rebranded itself with slogans such as "very funny."

One advantage FX, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and TBS have enjoyed is the connection to a media empire with programming prowess and deep pockets.

Meanwhile, WGN has clung to the vestiges of its lower-cost superstation model, meaning cable and satellite systems can't insert local commercials and must pay copyright fees for the programming to the government. Content shifts between local and national, with Cubs baseball and Chicago news still broadcast across the country. There is a dearth of first-run programming, and the schedule is dotted with such fillers as "In the Heat of the Night" and "Walker: Texas Ranger." Even Andy Griffith remains in the mix with "Matlock," part of a block of programming to cover the "WGN Morning News," which is not broadcast nationally.

Not surprisingly, WGN America lags TBS and FX in ratings, revenue and distribution.

TBS is ranked 11th, FX is 13th and WGN America 40th in average viewership among cable networks through November, according to Nielsen.

Of the more than 114 million homes receiving cable in the U.S., TBS reaches 99.7 million, FX 97.9 million and WGN America 75 million, according to Nielsen. One of the biggest holes in WGN's coverage area is New York City, where the station has never quite found its way into the cable lineup. Nationally, TBS and FX are included in the basic packages for Dish Network and DirecTV, while WGN America is relegated to the second or third tier.

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