Halyard Capital announced that its portfolio company, American Consolidated Media (ACM), the Texas community newspaper group founded by former Dallas Morning News President and General Manager Jeremy L. Halbreich (launched in 1998) was being sold to Macquarie Media Group (MMG) for $80 million. ACM was acquired from shareholder groups including Halyard Capital and Arena Capital Partners and several New York and Boston-based private equity funds.

Macquarie Media  and Macquarie Infrastructure being the Australian toll road giant, are both a division of the Macquarie Group,

Macquarie Media  which agreed Wednesday to purchase the forty local newspapers, primarily in Texas and Oklahoma will be bank rolled by Macquarie Bank , Australia's largest capital raising firm and has invested billions in purchasing roads in the US, Canada and UK. Most recently Macquarie joined with Cintra Concesiones of Spain in a controversial 75-year lease of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road.

Sal Costello, the leading opponent of toll road projects as head of the Texas Toll Party, says the move is directly related to a 4000-mile toll road project known as the Trans-Texas Corridor. It will cost between $145 and $183 billion to construct the road, expected to be up to 1200 feet wide, requiring the acquisition of 9000 square miles of land in the areas through which it will pass.

"The newspapers are the main communication tool for many of the rural Texan communities, with many citizens at risk of losing their homes and farms through eminent domain," Costello wrote.

Many of the small papers purchased, most have a circulation of 5000 or less, but have been critical of the Trans-Texas Corridor. An article in the Bonham Journal for example, states, "The toll roads will be under control of foreign investors, which more than frustrates Texans."