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Greenberg has both the assets - Forbes estimated his net worth at $3.2 billion - and the temperament to jump into a fight over the future of the stumbling newspaper giant.
A major stock position would put Greenberg in league with already angry Times' shareholders, such as Morgan Stanley Investment Management, to battle the board over whether the founding Ochs-Sulzberger family should hold a powerful class of stock that accounts for a majority of the voting power at the company.
A Times spokeswoman said the Ochs-Sulzberger family has given no indication that it wishes to change the so-called dual-class structure.
Sources said Greenberg views the Times, which has a market cap of $3.3 billion, as a top-flight brand but one with an "artificially depressed" stock price.
Times shares have plunged almost 15 percent in the last year, a drop that has put enormous pressure on Chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., the family scion who has been at the helm of the company since 1997.
Greenberg has both the money and the attitude to challenge the dynastic monopoly:
Shareholder watchdogs have slammed Times management as overpaid - criticism that forced Sulzberger and his cousin, Vice Chairman Michael Golden, to say in September they would forgo about $2 million in stock awards and pump it into a bonus pool for the company's employees.
Pinch is a notorious bantamweight when it comes to expressing his own philosophy in public, and has notoriously put his best writers behind a pay-per-view firewall which has depressed on-line viewership and generally angered long-time readers.
Let's wish Hank good luck and hope he can scare the NYT editorial board back into obedience to the laws of the USA.
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