New York, Jan 03: The New York Times Co. said on Thursday it completed its acquisition of the International Herald Tribune, and, according to a company memo, will combine that paper's operations with its own international news gathering. The restructuring aims to better compete in the era of global, 24-hour news, according to the memo.

The Times Co. purchased the Washington Post Co.'s 50-percent stake in the Paris-based Herald Tribune, once a must-read newspaper for American expatriates, for $65 million, it said in a statement on Thursday. Terms of the recently completed deal, first announced in October, had not been previously disclosed.
The Herald Tribune, which has carried a mix of mostly day-old articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post newspapers, will draw an increasing number of articles from the Times.

As part of the restructuring, Times business and foreign desks will move to 24-hour operation so reporters can file more timely stories for the Herald Tribune.
The Times has been aggressively expanding in the United States, along with strategic expansions abroad, including an English-language insert in the French paper Le Monde. Bureau Report