The Journal Register Company, the parent corporation that owns The New Haven Register, has retained investment bank Lazard to assist in a possible restructuring of the company, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Financial difficulties at the Journal Register may soon force the company to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange if its share price does not rebound from a current record low.

Over the past year, the company’s stock has fallen from $6.48 to $0.52 a share, bringing it into conflict with NYSE standards that require common stock trade at a minimum average of $1.00 per share over a 30-day period. Since March, the share price has not risen above $0.90.

The Journal Register’s fourth-quarter financial documents show that the company lost $148.4 million in the last 13 weeks of 2007. Total revenues fell almost 8.5 percent between 2006 and 2007, and the company ended last year with $620 million in net debt.

According to a Journal Register statement released April 3, the company will notify the NYSE within a 10-day period that it intends to “cure the deficiency” within the next six months.

But, the press release adds, “there can be no assurance that [the Company] will be able to do so.”

The New Haven Register is the Journal Register’s flagship paper, one of 22 daily newspapers the company operate in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut.

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